Letters to the Editor
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‘Scrub Them Out’
Mr. Bate’s “Scrub Them Out,” mistakenly associates Omar Rivera’s death with poor hospital hygiene [Oped, “Scrub Them Out,” November 6, 2007].
The facts published to date indicate that young Omar contracted a strain of MRSA outside of a health care setting. The community-acquired strain he had looks different under a microscope and is treated differently from the more common MRSA associated with health care. It is a different germ.
Whatever legal action may be taken against a hospital will likely be the result of how Omar was diagnosed and treated after he contracted the infection. Omar may have picked up the superbug at school. There have been numerous other cases of students, especially athletes, coming down with MRSA recently, and even NCAA and NFL team members have been affected.
That is why the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, or RID, is making its “Ten Steps to Protect Students from MRSA” available to parents, teachers, and school authorities. It appeared on this page last week, and you can find it at hospitalinfection.org.
Mr. Bates says hospital-acquired infections are costly. True, in fact far costlier than his $4.5 billion figure. The Centers for Disease Control currently estimates that these infections cost $27.7 billion and RID puts the figure at over $30.5 billion. More importantly these infections cost many patients their lives.
BETSY McCAUGHEY
Chairman
Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths
New York, N.Y.
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