- LONDON (Reuters) -- Britain
vowed Thursday to reduce hospital infections caused by a "superbug"
after new figures showed deaths from the drug-resistant bacteria had climbed
15-fold in a decade.
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- Professor Liam Donaldson, the UK's chief medical officer,
said preventing infection by the "superbug" was a key priority
after the Health Protection Agency (HPA) announced that 800 people died
of the infection in 2002, up from 51 in 1993.
-
- "We share this problem with other countries, but
we are determined to be up with the best in tackling it," he said.
-
- Cases of infection by the Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus
aureus (MRSA), an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria commonly carried
on the skin and nose of about one-third of healthy people, rose from 210
to 5,309 in 10 years.
-
- Patients in intensive care units in hospitals are especially
vulnerable to infection.
-
- "We found that deaths involving MRSA increased over
15-fold ... between 1993 and 2002," said Dr Georgia Duckworth of the
HPA, which monitors the spread of infectious diseases in the UK.
-
- She said it was difficult to know if the "superbug"
was the cause of death or just a contributing factor because most of the
infections occur in people who are already very ill.
-
- "This research however does show that MRSA is making
an increasing contribution to illness and mortality," she said.
-
- Infection control procedures can reduce the spread of
MRSA, Donaldson said. "While these infections will never be entirely
preventable, there is more that can be done -- and is being done -- to
deal with this problem," he added.
-
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- http://news.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=44
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