Many Staph Superbug Infections Come from Healthcare Facilities

Staph Superbug is also known as Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus or MRSA. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, most staph superbug infections are healthcare related. "There were 8,987 observed cases of invasive MRSA reported during the surveillance period. Most MRSA infections were healthcare-associated: 5,250 (58.4%) were community-onset infections, 2,389 (26.6%) were hospital-onset infections." This would indicate that 7,639 infections out of 8,987 were caused by getting medical care. This is not an acceptable number by anyone's standards. Health care settings like hospitals and nursing homes are the most common place to contract a staph superbug infection. You may go in for surgery only to find that you are much worse off than before. This deadly bug has an affinity for wounds and once it is in your bloodstream, it will cause organ failure and ultimately death. What is the medical community doing to protect us from the staph superbug? Not much.

According to the Associate for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology report in 2007, estimates that 1.2 million hospital patients are infected with MRSA (staph superbug) each year in the United States alone. An additional 423,000 in the hospital are colonized with MRSA. By colonized, this means it is a latent infection that may crop up at any point. I would think hospital staff and health care workers would be searching for innovative new ways to not infect their patients. If they are, it is not being publicized widely. My personal observation is that there seems to be a certain level of acceptance of the staph superbug in the medical community. If you get it, they will try to treat you. Yet, I do not see much in the way of preventative measures.