Professor Richard James, Director of the Centre for Healthcare Associated Infections (CHAI) at The University of Nottingham, says new strains of MRSA — community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococus aureus (CA-MRSA) — are causing infections in UK hospitals and circulating in the community. In people weakened by viruses such as Swine Flu these infections can trigger a form of pneumonia which kills in 72 hours.
On Tuesday July 21 2009 Professor James will be joined by actress Leslie Ash, Patron of CHAI, who is making an appeal film for the Centre which is hoping to raise £1.4 million through charitable donations for new research into healthcare associated infections. Leslie faced a long and difficult recovery after contracting MSSA, a strain related to MRSA.
Professor James says the situation has been made worse by the under-funding of hospital microbiology laboratories which has limited their ability to rapidly detect CA-MRSA strains, and by the paucity of new antibiotics to treat these infections — only two have been introduced in the last 25 years.
Professor Richard James said: “It took the UK over 10 years to start to get to grips with the problems of hospital MRSA infections and we are still fighting this war. We are not set up and ready to fight the next one against CA-MRSA infections which can cause serious infections in the young and healthy in the community.”
CHAI has launched an appeal to fund research by world leading scientists aimed at reducing the number of hospital infections by; developing rapid, economical diagnosis tests for MRSA and C.diff in NHS hospitals; and using new technology to track the evolution of superbugs that cause more serious infections.
Leslie Ash said: “From my own personal experience infections like these can change your life for ever. It took a lot of support from those I love to regain any sense of normality. That is why I am proud to be patron of CHAI. I urge people to join the fight against deadly hospital superbugs by supporting the new £1.4 million fundraising campaign.”
Although there has been a reduction in cases of hospital based MRSA and C.diff these infections are still responsible for twice as many deaths as road traffic accidents in the UK and cost the NHS £1billion a year in extra treatment costs. The cost to society is considerably higher than this. Over the past decade, almost 37,000 people have died after contracting one of these two devastating infections.
Swine flu and avian flu are examples of genetic exchange between flu viruses from animal to human hosts that may result in pandemics. It is not widely realised that in man bacteria can do the same thing and acquire DNA from other species that increase their resistance to antibiotics and/or their ability to cause serious disease.
Professor James said: “The concern is that exposure of a population with a high carriage rate of CA-MRSA, community based MRSA, to a flu pandemic will trigger a large number of necrotizing pneumonias that would swamp the health service. It has been suggested by several authors that many of the deaths caused by the 1918 Spanish flu were actually caused by Staph aureus and not the virus.”
