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Lethal Strain of Germ
May Pose Threat to Public Health
by Sheryl Gay
Stolberg
"More than 200 people in Minnesota and North Dakota have become sick –
and four children have died – over the past two years after becoming
infected with a drug-resistant germ that until recently had been
confined to hospitals and nursing
homes, said Federal health officials said."
"Staph germs exist in the nostrils and skin and can be passed through
hand to hand contact, but are typically harmless unless they enter the
body through a cut or a scrape, which enables them to travel through
the bloodstream and attack a variety of organs."
"Dr. [Tim] Naimi, [a medical epidemiologist for the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta], said that parents should
not be alarmed but should take common precautions like cleaning out
infected cuts, washing hands frequently, and seeking medical care if
their children appear sick.… [these] deaths are the ’tip of the
iceberg’ …and at least 200 other people, most of them children and
healthy young adults, had also been infected…. For the past decade,
experts have been warning that misuse of antibiotics is creating a
wave of drug-resistant bacteria, or "superbugs".
Are antibacterial cleansers causing the same problem? Scientists have
already found that anti-bacterials such as triclosan can also cause
the mutation of "superbugs".
"….Dr. Levy of Tufts University said some experts refused to believe
[these] reports. He gave a talk about the recent infections at a
conference of microbiologists in May…. he said ‘Some people denied
that it exists.’.…insisting that the infected patients ‘must have
passed through a hospital at some point’."
"None of the children who died in Minnesota and North Dakota had
visited a hospital or nursing home, Dr. Naimi said, nor were they
exposed to anyone who did. He said the lethal bacterial appear to be a
slightly different strain from those typically found in hospitals,
suggesting that the staph bugs did not escape from the hospital, but
rather mutated in the environment. ‘We don’t know how it happened’, he
said."
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) (from the World Wide Web)
Tuberculosis, cholera and other diseases once thought almost
eradicated in the Americas have developed drug-resistant strains and
again threaten millions, a leading health official said Monday….
….Another unexpected development is the return of diseases once
thought manageable, in part due to the mutating nature of carriers,
Alleyne said.
"Drug-resistant strains of microbes are having a deadly impact on the
fight against tuberculosis, malaria, cholera, diarrhea and pneumonia
[which] together kill more than 10 million people worldwide each
year….This is happening at a time when too few new drugs are being
developed to replace those that have lost their effectiveness". [Dr.
George A.O. Alleyne, Director-General of the Pan-American Health
Organization]
He singled out the mosquito that carries dengue – the highly
debilitating and untreatable disease some call "breakbone fever" –
that infected 770,000 people in the Americas last year, and killed
dozens. "There was a time when a lot of this region was free of this
mosquito, but now we find virtually the whole region reinfected".
Alleyne said. He blamed excessive reliance on Chemical insecticides,
which the mosquitoes have become resistant to, and inadequate
sanitation that provides an environment for mosquitoes to breed.
Tuberculosis, affecting 400,000 a year in the region, was another
concern. "We thought we had the magic bullets to treat it. Now we see
it coming back…and killing 137 people every day", Alleyne said.
Other diseases identified as re-emerging in the last decade:
--Cholera, reintroduced to Central and South America following an
absence of nearly a century.
--Bubonic Plague, which has returned to Peru since 1992.
--Hantavirus, a rat-borne disease that was discovered again in the
U..S. state of New Mexico
--Drug-resistant malaria has infected a great swath of the South
American Amazon, attacking entire villages in Guyana.
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