- Drug-resistant bacteria that cause
painful and potentially dangerous skin infections are gaining a
foothold in the nation's prisons, health officials say. Jails in at
least six states have reported outbreaks of drug-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus, a strain of the common staph infection that can
give its victims pimples, oozing boils, blood infections or pneumonia.
Dr. Matthew Kuehnert, an epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, said the disease could be in many more jails
but it is uncertain how widespread infections have become. Most prisons
don't track illnesses well and many infections may be going unnoticed,
he said. Until recently, staph infections resistant to antibiotics have
been seen almost exclusively in hospitals and nursing homes, where
patients weakened by other illnesses are more susceptible. Doctors must
use more powerful drugs and in some cases cut away tissue to treat the
infections. The staph disease turned up in a Mississippi jail in late
1999, infecting about 60 inmates in 12 months. About 200 cases were
reported by jails last year in Texas, 94 in Georgia and seven in
Tennessee. In the largest outbreak, more than 1,000 inmates were
diagnosed with drug-resistant staph last year in Los Angeles. An
outbreak in 2001 of at least 21 cases at the Bucks County Prison in
Doylestown, north of Philadelphia, prompted inmates there to sue,
claiming they had been kept in unsanitary conditions. The suit, filed
in September, said officials did little to halt the spread of the
disease, even after a female inmate diagnosed with drug-resistant staph
died. County spokesman Ron Watson said there is no proof the death was
related to the illness. And he said the number of infections at the
prison has dropped to just one since summer, when officials made
changes similar to those made by other prisons with outbreaks. They
gave all inmates antibacterial soap, eliminated washcloths - which had
been damp magnets for germs - and began laundering the clothes and
towels of infected prisoners separately, Watson said. Such measures may
seem standard, but experts said they can be difficult to employ in
jails, which have long been incubators for infectious disease. The
American Civil Liberties Union says prisons and health officials must
be more vigilant in preventing outbreaks. It has criticized treatment
of the Los Angeles prisoners, who were initially told by guards that
poisonous spiders were causing the infections. ``I'm sure it is still
being misdiagnosed around the country,'' ACLU attorney Ben Wizner said.
``There needs to be a coordinated public health response to this.''
Prisons are not the only places people are contracting drug-resistant
staph, which has been occurring in hospitals since about 1980. About 50
cases were reported last year among high school athletes in a Houston
suburb, and an outbreak was reported in San Francisco's gay community.
__________________