Link: cbs3.com – Local High School Student Dies From MRSA.
A Philadelphia public high school student died earlier this week of a confirmed case of MRSA, the school district announced.
Saalen Jones, a senior at Martin Luther King High, passed away Tuesday at Albert Einstein Medical Center.
Jones, 17, was a cornerback for the Martin Luther King football team. It was not immediately known how Jones was exposed to the bacteria.
The following statement was released by the Board of Directors of the Oak Lane Youth Association regarding Jones’ passing:
"The Board of Directors of the Oak Lane Youth Association would like to pass along our condolences and prayers to the family of Saalen Jones. Saalen passed away suddenly on Tuesday, September 23, 2008. Saalen was a dedicated member of the Oak Lane family, who will be remembered for his fearless and selfless play on the field, and his great leadership and determination off of the field. Funeral arrangements will be posted as soon as they become available."
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
From what I’ve seen and read, this stuff is spread primarily through sweaty skin-to-skin contact, or on damp wet surfaces or sweaty clothes.
This is why most kids getting this in schools are football players or wrestlers – and not the general student body.
Because obviously, athletics and the lockerroom contain all of these high-risk factors in combination. Which make them perfect breeding grounds.
Ideally, Staph likes skin the most, and secondly stuff that resembles skin and lets it form biofilms.
So, it can survive for up to 6 months on skin flakes
6-8 weeks on hard surfaces
5 days on bedding
Honestly, cleaning schools is just a quick band-aid. Might as well try to wipe out the common cold…
The real solution that we need is a cure. And the only scientific one I’ve heard of so far for that is phage therapy (http://tahilla.typepad.com/mrsawatch/bacteriophage_therapy/index.html) – which is widely-used in the Baltics, but not the antibiotic-driven US yet.
It has almost a 100% cure rate! The question then is, when will it become widely-available here???????????? How many more kids and athletes must die before we quickly adopt this therapy?????
Disinfecting the school is largely a cosmetic exercise – the pupils can reinfect it as soon as they return.
It does seem deeply unproffesional to send him into the game with that diagnosis already being mentioned. He could infect others in the close contact of the game and agravatte his own skin infection. You may want to ask the school for clarification and assurances about the future
My granson plays football for Aynor High School in aynor SC. I went to a game on Thursday 10/16/08. His mom and I noticed that his arm had a bandage at his elbow. After the game, he told us that his coach told him that he had a staff infection. I took him to the dr. the next morning and a culture was taken. The dr. treated the injury and bandaged it. he was given Septra also. Mon. the culture came back and it was MRSA. The Dr. changed the anitbiotic and prescibed soaking. What about the school? Why would they send him into a game and shouldn’t they disenfect the gym and eq