Oct 17, 2007 6:58 am US/Central
Va. Schools Shut Down After 'Superbug' Death
Government Report Says Strain's Fatalities Could Outnumber AIDS
BEDFORD, Va. (CBS) ―
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Staph infections, including this serious MRSA strain, have been spreading through schools nationwide in recent weeks, according to health and education officials.
CBS
No classes today at 21 schools in Bedford County, Virginia. The schools will undergo a cleaning following the death of a high schooler who came down with an antibiotic-resistant staph infection.
Ashton Bonds, a 17-year-old senior at Staunton River High School, died Monday after being diagnosed with MRSA.
Staph infections, including the serious MRSA strain, have been spreading through schools nationwide in recent weeks, according to health and education officials.
Students at Staunton River organized a protest Monday using text messages and social networking sites. Yesterday,they took Bedford County Schools Superintendent James Blevins on a tour of the school to show him how unclean it is, in particular the sports locker rooms.
Blevins ordered Bedford schools closed today for cleaning.
More than 90,000 Americans get potentially deadly infections each year from a drug-resistant staph "superbug," 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. The report shows just how far one form of the staph germ, called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, has spread beyond its traditional hospital setting.
Dr. Monica Klevens of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that conducted the study, spoke to CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook, putting the numbers into shocking context.
"So what that means," Klevens said, "is that it's the equivalent of having a death related to MRSA about every 30 minutes in the U.S in a year."
The overall incidence rate was about 32 invasive infections per 100,000 people. That's an "astounding" figure, said an editorial in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, which published the study.
Most drug-resistant staph cases are mild skin infections. But this study focused on invasive infections - those that enter the bloodstream or destroy flesh and can turn deadly.
Researchers found that only about one-quarter involved hospitalized patients. However, more than half were in the health care system - people who had recently had surgery or were on kidney dialysis, for example. Open wounds and exposure to medical equipment are major ways the bug spreads.
In recent years, the resistant germ has become more common in hospitals and it has been spreading through prisons, gyms and locker rooms, and in poor urban neighborhoods.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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