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Officials making infections a priority |
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Saturday, 03 November 2007 |
Benton School District administrators are encouraging parents of students to take precautionary measures if they suspect their children might have an infection.
The measure is related to an outbreak of staph infections in the state, Tony Prothro, superintendent, said.
Some cases of staph infections have been reported in the Benton district, but none involve the methicillin-resistant Staphyl-ococcus aureus (MRSA) that can be life-threatening, Prothro said. A youngster in another area died recently of MRSA, he noted.
“Although no students in the Benton School District have been reported as contracting MRSA, the district feels it is prudent to send a precautionary note to parents at this time,” he said.
If a child has a staph infection or another type of infection is suspected, the following steps are recommended by the Arkansas Department of Health to help decrease the risk of exposure:
•Contact a healthcare provider.
•Cover all wounds with clean bandages, particularly those that produce drainage or pus. Follow your healthcare provider’s instructions on proper care of the wound. Keeping the infection covered will help prevent the spread of infection to others.
•Wash hands often. All members of a family and others with whom they come in close contact should wash their hands frequently with soap and warm water or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer, especially after changing the bandage or touching the infected wound.
•Don’t share towels or personal items, such as razors, combs, clothing or sports equipment that directly touch the body. Wash sheets, towels and clothes with hot water (at least 160 degrees F. if possible), laundry detergent and chlorine bleach.
•Dry clothes in a hot dryer, rather than air-drying them. This also helps kill bacteria in clothing.
•Routinely clean any exercise equipment used by others.
If these precautions are taken, Health Department officials say there is no reason to keep students at home.
Small children with draining wounds may need to be excluded from daycare until their wounds heal, unless good wound care and hand-washing can be assured, officials said.
An Internet site provided the following information about methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection.
It is caused by a Staphylococcus aureus bacteria — often called “staph.”
Decades ago, a strain of staph emerged in hospitals that was resistant to the broad-spectrum antibiotics commonly used to treat it. Dubbed methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), it was one of the first germs to outwit all but the most powerful drugs. MRSA infection can be fatal.
Staph bacteria are normally found on the skin or in the nose of about one-third of the population. If you have staph on your skin or in your nose but aren’t sick, you are said to be “colonized” but not infected with MRSA. Healthy people can be colonized with MRSA and have no ill effects; however, they can pass the germ to others.
Staph bacteria are generally harmless unless they enter the body through a cut or other wound, and even then they often cause only minor skin problems in healthy people. But in older adults and people who are ill or have weakened immune systems, ordinary staph infections can cause serious illness called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA.
In the 1990s, a type of MRSA began showing up in the wider community. Today, that form of staph, known as community-associated MRSA, or CA-MRSA, is responsible for many serious skin and soft tissue infections and for a serious form of pneumonia.
Vancomycin is one of the few antibiotics still effective against hospital strains of MRSA infection, although the drug is no longer effective in every case. Several drugs continue to work against CA-MRSA, but CA-MRSA is a rapidly evolving bacterium, and it may be a matter of time before it, too, becomes resistant to most antibiotics. |
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