Mandatory MRSA Reporting in California

Image: MRSA

In an effort to get a handle on antibiotic resistant staph infections that reportedly kill 19,000 a year, California has become the first state to require the illness be reported to local health authorities.

This includes staph infection that are serious enough to require hospitalization or that result in death such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. MRSA now joins measles, meningitis and syphilis as reportable contagious public health illnesses.

MRSA can begin as a boil or skin abscess but can be fatal if it attacks organs. That is what happened to actress Alicia Cole, who nearly died from acquiring MRSA in a Los Angeles area hospital.

The order comes from the state’s public health director. Up until now trying to track the growing number of cases of MRSA has been difficult.  

This new reporting requirement applies only to cases that begin outside of a hospital or nursing home setting and in previously health individuals such as among school children.  

These co-called community-acquired staph infections are a particularly virulent strain USA 300 first found in San Francisco in 2001.  It is believed to be responsible for skin infection and infections of the soft-tissue found in ERs around the country.

The vast majority, approximately 85 percent of MRSA cases are tracked to medical settings.

Last month in the annals of Internal Medicine, San Francisco General Hospital reported a variation of USA 300 that was resistant to six antibiotics was “especially common among men who have sex with men.” The report has been called homophobic from some members of the gay community.

Last October, a Journal of the American Medical Association report finds that hospitals are the most likely place for one to acquire life-threatening MRSA but the state reporting requirement will not cover hospitals.

A Consumers Union spokesperson says the reporting requirement in California focuses on the smallest part of the problem in the community. Lisa McGiffert says “They want to focus on community infections, which they are not responsible for.”

In 2004, Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have required hospitals infection rate reporting although some counties such as San Mateo County has been reporting MRSA rates since 1995.

Meanwhile the Chicago Tribune is reporting today that MRSA incidents are rising in rural hospitals. 791 have died from the infection from 2004 to 2006. #