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StaphAseptic™ News
Norway's MRSA solution
January 4, 2010
The Spokesman-Review
By Martha Mendoza And Margie Mason, Associated Press
OSLO, Norway - Aker University Hospital is a dingy place to heal. The floors are streaked and scratched. A light layer of dust coats the blood pressure monitors. A faint stench of urine and bleach wafts from a pile of soiled bedsheets dropped in a corner.
Look closer, however, at a microscopic level, and this place is pristine. There is no sign of a dangerous and contagious staph infection that killed tens of thousands of patients in the most sophisticated hospitals of Europe, North America and Asia this year, soaring virtually unchecked.
The reason: Norwegians stopped taking so many drugs.
Twenty-five years ago, Norwegians were also losing their lives to this bacteria. But Norway's public health system fought back with an aggressive program that made it the most infection-free country in the world. A key part of that program was cutting back severely on the use of antibiotics.
Now a spate of new studies from around the world proves that Norway's model can be replicated with extraordinary success, and public health experts are saying these deaths - 19,000 in the U.S. each year alone, more than from AIDS - are unnecessary.
"It's a very sad situation that in some places so many are dying from this, because we have shown here in Norway that methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) can be controlled, and with not too much effort," said Jan Hendrik-Binder, Oslo's MRSA medical adviser. "But you have to take it seriously, you have to give it attention, and you must not give up."
The World Health Organization says antibiotic resistance is one of the leading public health threats on the planet.
Now, in Norway's simple solution, there's a glimmer of hope.
This is a portion of the original article. To keep reading, visit Spokesman.com
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