This alleged “superbug,” so called because it is resistant to standard antibiotics, is showing up more and more in the common areas of our society. If you attend school, ride the subway, travel through an airport, go to a gym for a workout or visit an aging relative in a nursing home, you may encounter MRSA.
Once MRSA infects you, it’s a tough bug to kill. But it’s not something you can ignore because if you don’t seek treatment, the infection can escalate into life-threatening complications, attacking major organs, joints and the bloodstream.
MRSA infections are particularly dangerous in hospitals, where many patients present with open wounds, and invasive operating devices combine with highly fragile immune systems to put a large number of people at risk.
Statistics are somewhat hard to come by because MRSA manifests in many forms. The last statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention date back to 1999 when an estimated 127,000 MRSA infections were detected. The CDC also reported that 11,000 people died that year from MRSA-related causes, roughly fewer than 10 percent of the cases.
The CDC estimated that approximately two in 100 people carry the MRSA staph germ. But there is good news –awareness of the infection means cases appear to be decreasing. A recent CDC study indicated that reported MRSA infections in hospitals have dropped by more than 50 percent from 2005-2011, the years of the survey. That greater awareness, proactive treatments and isolation of potential carriers has contributed to limiting the spread.