{"id":849,"date":"2005-04-07T09:05:10","date_gmt":"2005-04-07T13:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=849"},"modified":"2005-04-07T09:05:10","modified_gmt":"2005-04-07T13:05:10","slug":"ignorance-is-epidemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=849","title":{"rendered":"ignorance is epidemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Active bacterial core surveillance of the emerging infections program network (ABCs<\/a>) is<\/a> “a collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and several state health departments and universities participating in the Emerging Infections Program Network.” The NYT<\/em>‘s runs this AP blurb<\/a> about an ABCs report published this month<\/a> in the New England Journal of Medicine that declares “17 percent of the drug-resistant staph infections had no apparent links to health-care settings.”<\/p>\n

“Close to one-fifth of what used to be a hospital-specific problem is now a community problem. And that’s a large number,” said Dr. Scott K. Fridkin, an epidemiologist at the centers. “We didn’t think it would be anywhere near that high when we started the study.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

ABCs appears<\/a> to have reached these conclusions based upon incidents identified by participating laboratories that were then complemented by “data collected from patient medical records (which is) obtained through the cooperation of on-site hospital personnel (e.g., Infection Control Practitioners) or through medical record review by county health department personnel or ABCs surveillance personnel.” If this Case Report Form (pdf<\/a>) is any indication of the follow-up done to assess the origins of these cases it’s selective reasoning at best to say these cases were not transmitted in a health care setting or that health care and its institutions don’t contribute to the growing epidemic.<\/p>\n

According to ABCs findings<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The annual disease incidence varied according to site (25.7 cases per 100,000 population in Atlanta vs. 18.0 per 100,000 in Baltimore) and was significantly higher among persons less than two years old than among those who were two years of age or older (relative risk, 1.51; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.19 to 1.92) and among blacks than among whites in Atlanta (age-adjusted relative risk, 2.74; 95 percent confidence interval, 2.44 to 3.07).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Take a look at the Case Report Form. Which personal questions are remotely relevant to the groups? For instance, how many of those under two years instead of going to a physician or clinic for an infection shared antibiotics with a sibling or neighbour, used one that may have been out-of-date, or didn’t finish a prescription only to return to the doctor later for another? How many of those who did go to the doctor were ever cultured before given an antibiotic? How many interacted with any of the above?<\/p>\n

The Kansas City Star<\/em> is calling this an alert on skin infections and also quotes Fridkin<\/a>: <\/p>\n

“‘This should serve as a red flag to doctors whenever they are treating skin infections,’ said Scott Fridkin of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who led the study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine.”<\/p>\n

That’s it? Culture skin infections and we’ll avert a crisis? No admonishment for those physicians who prescribe antibiotics for ear infections or bronchitis without first taking cultures? No harsh words for a health care system that throws up barriers against those who don’t have insurance, and when they do present, are treated as a sub-class and given the most minimal of care, shoddy practices we have known for years contribute to these drug-resistant diseases? No mention of the use of antibiotics in factory-raised (and otherwise) meat? Even the smallest farms have their own supply of antibiotics on hand the treat the animals. All of this leads to hosts especially vulnerable to environments fertile with lingering bacteria which in no way can be divorced from the system which fostered it. <\/p>\n

CBC<\/em><\/a>‘s Investigative Unit<\/a>, as part of its ongoing series Invisible Dangers<\/a>, this week featured Mary Ellis<\/a>, an 82-year-old who contracted C. difficile while undergoing knee-replacement surgery. I bring it up because of an action taken by Ms. Ellis’ daughter which I believe facilitated her mother’s healing from this infection. <\/p>\n

“Ellis’s family began to think she was re-infecting herself at home. They moved her into a retirement home for three weeks while special cleaners disinfected her home and they installed new carpet. Meanwhile, she continued to take expensive antibiotics. The final bill came to $10,000.”<\/p>\n

Why did Fridkin and associates ignore the environment, not only hospital-related but prison as well, then claim to have solid ground to make such statements? Why pour money into reports whilst ignoring known solutions? Cheney and Edwards’ ignorance of the AIDS epidemic was an alarm. This report is another. Relying upon gov’t agencies to effectively deal with this is simply ignorant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Active bacterial core surveillance of the emerging infections program network (ABCs) is “a collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and several state health departments and universities participating in the Emerging Infections Program Network.” The NYT‘s runs … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-dH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}