Local News

'Superbug' Worries Mount Close To Home

City Public Health Director: Don't Be Scared, But Be Concerned

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Several young people are being treated for the drug resistant MRSA "Superbug," and the director of the Chicago Department of Public Health says people should not be scared, but should be concerned.

As CBS 2's Rafael Romo reports, MRSA is a staphylococcus bacterium that is resistant to most drugs. At least four Chicago-area students have recently been diagnosed with the infection.

The main problem in fighting MRSA is that it is resistant to most drugs.

"People shouldn't be scared, they should be concerned, and people should take precaution their kids, places they work, play, go to school are cleaned well, the number one defense," said Chicago Department of Public Health Director Dr. Terry Mason.

Clarissa Love says her son Tony has had 13 surgeries already to fight the disease. Love believes her son's infection started with a cut in his elbow that eventually spread throughout his entire body.

"It's in his bones now, so they had to go back in the same incisions that they made and they had to drill holes in his bones," Love said.

Two weeks ago, two freshman football players at Naperville North High School were also treated for MRSA, and officials are now disinfecting the school.

"At this time we're going through; we're going to hit everything like the handles of the sinks, doorknobs, and things like that with ammonia," said Naperville District 302 Indoor Air Quality Manager Thomas Malamos. 

In Chicago, school officials at Chavez Elementary School and Walter Payton Prep High School sent letters home with students warning parents of symptoms to watch for after at least one student at each school was being treated for possible staph infections.

"We'll give both of the schools a good once over, a thorough cleaning to be on the safe side," said CPS spokesman Mike Vaughn.

A student at Munster High School in Munster, Ind., was also diagnosed recently with MRSA. An automated call from school district went out to homes of parents with children in the school system on Thursday night.

And at Monmouth College in western Illinois about a dozen of the football team's 110 players were recently diagnosed with the bacterial infection from an unknown source. Two players still had a staph infection as of Friday, said school spokesman Barry McNamara.

MRSA, short for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is the same infection that killed high school senior Ashton Bonds, 17, in Bedford County, Virginia, on Monday.

Jeanine Thomas, a survivor of the disease, says MRSA attacks almost every organ in the body.

"I went into multiple organ failure, had many surgeries, was in the hospital almost a month and ended up sick in bed for almost six months," said Thomas, of the MRSA survivors network.

The disease has been striking across the country. On Thursday, officials announced that at least two Connecticut high school students have been diagnosed with a potentially deadly infection, and crews have been cleaning a high school locker room and gym in Richmond, Indiana, after a student developed an infection. Officials are treating it as if it's the strain that was blamed for the death of a Virginia high school senior.

MRSA is spread by direct contact. Naperville North is advising proper hand washing, as well as washing of clothes and equipment, keeping cuts and abrasions clean and dressed with a dry bandage, and not sharing personal items such as combs, towels, water bottles or deodorant.

Published reports say about 30 percent of the population carry MRSA on their skin or in their nasal passages, and the bacterium can be carried without causing disease.

But more than 90,000 Americans get potentially deadly infections each year from a drug-resistant staph "superbug," which in the past was only associated with hospitals, the government reported Tuesday in its first overall estimate of invasive disease caused by the germ.

Deaths tied to these infections may exceed those caused by AIDS, said one public health expert commenting on the new study.

A representative of the Illinois Department of Public Health says schools are not required to notify parents if a student is diagnosed with MRSA. Doctors and hospitals are also not required to report MRSA cases to the state, so it's unclear exactly how many cases there have been in Illinois.

CBS 2's Rafael Romo contributed to this report.

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