Drug-resistant staph may be spreading

Federal health officials are worried that drug-resistant strains of staph bacteria may be spreading, after four Midwestern children died from infections.

ATLANTA – Federal health officials are worried that drug-resistant strains of staph bacteria may be spreading, after four Midwestern children died from infections. Drug-resistant staph was once largely confined to hospitals and nursing homes, but the children’s deaths in Minnesota and North Dakota show it may be spreading to communities, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

“These are the first deaths we’re aware of that have appeared in the United States and in medical literature,” said Dr. J. Todd Weber of the CDC’s National Center for Infectious Diseases. “How rare or how common it is, we don’t know yet.”

Staph bacteria are the No. 1 cause of hospital-acquired infections in the United States, blamed for 13% of the 2 million hospital infections annually.

Source: USA Today