Link: A step ahead on MRSA | TheNewsTribune.com | Tacoma, WA.
They recognized the problem earlier than most, in part, because of an MRSA lung infection in a young boy in the late 1990s. After forming a task force in 2000, health officials began tracking MRSA infections in the county.
The group also worked with doctors’ offices, nursing homes, pharmacies, schools and hospitals to ensure infections were identified early, treated correctly or prevented in the first place.
Those early efforts to fight MRSA – a version of a generally harmless skin bacteria – were among the first anywhere, says state health department spokesman Tim Church.
The Pierce County effort “is a model … for MRSA public awareness around the country,” he said. “Pierce County has really been ahead when it comes to looking at MRSA, gathering information and knowing what to do about it.”
That’s good, because, as elsewhere in the country, MRSA infections are more common in Pierce County than they used to be.
According to the county Health Department, one of the few in the state that track MRSA, 696 residents developed infections in 2001. In 2006, the most recent data available, MRSA infected 4,012.
It’s hard to know what’s behind the increase, said Dr. David Bales, an infectious disease expert and chairman of the Pierce County task force.
People might be finding more MRSA infections because there are more of them, he said. It also could be that local medical providers are looking for them more than in the past, or a combination of both.
