IS THERE A MRSA DISCONNECT?

(10/29/2007)

By Bob Weaver There is considerable reason to believe there is a disconnect over MRSA, the staph infection that has gotten a lot of media attention, although some public health officials have not been "over-worried" about the reports, mostly because MRSA is not new to West Virginia. And that MRSA has been treated adequately, they say. Health officials indicate the current reporting of MRSA is not an outbreak. There are two strains of MRSA, one is community associated MRSA and the other is hospital-based MRSA, which is far more serious. The Mid-Ohio Valley Health Department says the type of MRSA being reported in the region is the less serious, although they have said the critical strain has been reported. The health department has not released numbers regarding the two strains. The cases of MRSA reported to the WV Department of Health by physicians is a voluntary system, with health officials now saying there may be a lot more cases. There seems to be a disconnect between what health officials in Charleston are reporting to state media about MRSA numbers, with the Mid-Ohio Valley Health Department and regional schools reporting additional county cases to the Hur Herald. The disconnect seems to be based on policy. It does not require the health department to report cases of MRSA to the school system, hence school officials are frequently saying they are unaware of MRSA cases. Still, because of wide-spread media attention to the MRSA problem, virtually all WV school systems are taking aggressive action to keep the problem at bay. Perhaps the most frustrated are parents of children with MRSA, who perceive public health officials or the schools have not been paying much attention to an illness that has created a serious problem for them. The Herald has received several e-mails from regional parents expressing how severely the problem has affected their children, with a perception that "news" about the problem has been stifled. Certainly, the problem has been getting a lot of attention in the media these past weeks.

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