Interesting article -- maybe other municipalities will follow. http://www.tulsaworld.com/newsStory.asp?ID=061120_Ne_A13_Tough38265
Tough staph variety has yet to touch jail By KIM ARCHER World Staff Writer 11/20/2006 Officials say a new cleaner has made the difference. Large jails throughout the country are struggling with a highly contagious, drug-resistant form of staph bacteria, but the Tulsa Jail has had no new cases of staph infection for nearly three months, jail officials said. They credit a new silver-based hard surface disinfectant. The resistant form of staph -- methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus, known as MRSA -- has become an increasing problem in various institutions, including hospitals, schools, day-care centers and other public places. The Tulsa Jail uses a cleaning agent called Staph Attack to get rid of the infectious bacteria. Before the jail began using the product, it averaged 12 cases of staph infection each month. That number has dropped to zero. "The jail is a microcosm of the entire community. So a jail is very susceptible to any kind of disease found in the community," Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz said. "We're always concerned with the health of our inmates. It reflects the health of the entire community." Drug-resistant staph infections have been a problem in hospitals and institutional settings for some time. This type of infection, called hospital-acquired MRSA, generally infects people who have weakened immune systems or who have been hospitalized or have undergone a medical procedure. But the infection has spread in recent years to otherwise healthy people in community centers, schools, day-care centers and other public places. This community-acquired MRSA causes skin infections. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the first case of MRSA in the U.S. was reported in 1968. The share of hospitalized patients being infected by the bacteria has increased significantly -- from 2 percent in 1974 to about 40 percent in 1997. MRSA is now the most common skin infection seen in city emergency rooms, according to a nationwide study by UCLA researchers. The findings appeared in the Aug. 17 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. "Doctors need to change what they've done for decades," said one of the researchers, David Talan. "Traditional antibiotics don't work against MRSA." Becky Coffman, an epidemiologist in the Oklahoma State Department of Health, said that although MRSA isn't a reportable disease, her agency tracks the bacteria, particularly when an outbreak occurs. "Phone calls from the public leads us to believe that (MRSA infections) are on the increase. It affects crowded quarters such as jails and military barracks, and now even day care centers and schools," she said. MRSA is common in jails because prisoners usually have restrictions on how frequently they can shower and change clothes, Coffman said. Tulsa County Chief Deputy Tim Albin said the Tulsa Jail's success with the product goes hand-in-hand with a strong education and awareness campaign among employees and inmates. Employees are trained to recognize the skin infection as inmates enter the system and channel those inmates to the medical unit. But Albin said he had definitely seen a drastic reduction of any kind of staph infection since the jail began using the new cleaner. Previous cleaners used at the jail were toxic, requiring the use of gloves and masks during application. And none of them worked nearly as well as Staph Attack, Albin said. "My goal is to keep my employees healthy and the inmates healthy," he said. Shawn LeBar, who represents the Tulsa distributor of Staph Attack, said it had been ordered by hospitals and jails throughout the country during the past four months. "The interesting thing is that the bacteria over time has built up a resistance to traditional killers, which contain either chlorine, ammonia or alcohol," he said. ge
