All of us have Staph on our skin. It has been with use for centuries. Typically it is not a virulent organism unless it is poked deeply into the skin somehow.

My bite was from a blood sucking fly, that bites in the Northern climes during
spring and early summer. This bite injected a common Staph right into a capillary for me.

The only difference with mrsa is that this Staph has mutated into being mostly drug resistant. About 5 yrs ago it was only found in Alaska (don't know why),
and parts of Detroit Mich...commonly among drug addicts sharing needles.
Hospitals became infected, and I recall a study in the past that estimated 25% of all workers in hospitals had this organism in the nasal passages.
Here is a paper from the past on community acquired mrsa compared to hospital acquired. Some strains have been considered more virulent however.
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ICH...0/5590.web.pdf

You can get Staph from improperly prepared skin prior to surgeries. Staph in the knee can develop from poor procedural sterility. Getting it in the knee joint is a nightmare.

You can get a non-mrsa Staph infection the same way as mrsa.
The only difference is the mutated one, does not respond to antibiotics.
In my case it was high dose Erythromycin for 10 days, I had to take...it was a brutal treatment. The doctors in Maine said if I had waited 12 hrs to come in..I most probably would have died of a brain abscess, since the orbit of the eye drains close to the brain. (any infection of the eye, is very serious)

People with HIV or hereditary immune suppression, on chemo, very young very old...these are the most at risk. Ignoring any break in the skin can be terrible.
But you are not likely to get sick from mrsa if it is just sitting on your skin.
You can pass it on towels, and intimate contact. In the early days, it was more common in the homosexual population, but that has changed.

Here is a CDC recommendation:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5233a4.htm

This is what happened last year with the Redskins outbreak:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...080201938.html

Hi to all,
Sorry double posting so got rid of this

We are in rual Northeast Pocono are here, and two of our students were diagx the last few days. the school was shut down for sanitation.

TJIS LINK HAS TOTAL INFO PARENTS RECEIVED
https://www.edline.net/DocView.page

Because kids share lockers, their coats and book bags often lay against one another, lunch tables shared, it is a hot spot to kids to get an infection at school. I do not know if this is the strain of Staph that has been going around, but we are back from Disney and a young fella there had a sore finger and Mom took him tot he medical center and a small paper cut developed Staph.

I hope that everyone stays safe and their families.
dianne
Two local districts ward off staph
W-B Area, Wyoming Area tackle MRSA bug
JEREMY GRAD jgrad@timesleader.com




Two elementary students in Luzerne County have been treated for a potentially deadly and antibiotic-resistant strain of staph infection recently, leading at least two local school districts to take extra precautions to keep students safe.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, has struck a student from the Wilkes-Barre Area School District and Wyoming Area School District within the last month.

The latest case was reported Thursday by Wilkes-Barre Area – although the student who had been infected was MRSA already received treatment and recovered. The student attends Kistler Elementary.

Jeff Namey, superintendent at Wilkes-Barre Area, said the Kistler Elementary was sanitized Thursday night into Friday morning.

“The building is probably the cleanest building in town,” Namey said Sunday night. “The building has been totally and completely sanitized.”

So far Kistler Elementary is the only school building Wilkes-Barre Area has sanitized for MRSA. That will soon change, Namey said.

“We’re working with our custodial staff and we’ll put together that schedule tomorrow,” Namey said of the district’s plan to sanitize every building in the district – in an effort to ensure MRSA does not get a foothold in the buildings.

Parents of Wilkes-Barre Area students will be getting a letter from Namey with information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how to avoid MRSA infection. The letter is scheduled to be mailed today.

Wilkes-Barre Area will also decide today whether to hold an informational meeting for parents, students and the public about the dangers of MRSA. A similar meeting was held on Wednesday by the Wyoming Area School District.

Magie Pace, manager of Infectious Control, Eastern Region of Geisinger, said at that informational meeting that, “when it all comes down to it the kids need to understand that they are responsible. They should not share towels. They should not share bottles. We need common sense and we need to think with a level head. Teach your children hygiene.”

MRSA was first identified in the 1960s in clinical settings. Since then it has been migrating out of hospitals and nursing homes and into other public facilities – such as schools. If caught early enough, MRSA infection is curable using a new and stronger generation of modern antibiotics.

Jeremy Grad, a Times Leader staff writer, can be reached at 829-7210.
Find this article at:
http://www.timesleader.com/news/2007..._folo_ART.html