Hospital rooms, surfaces and equipment, as well as laundry items, need to be properly disinfected and cleaned regularly. For example, health care workers can help prevent HA-MRSA by washing their hands with soap and water or using hand sanitizer before and after each clinical appointment. They also must follow strict hand hygiene procedures. Visitors and health care workers caring for people in isolation may need to wear protective garments. In the hospital, people who are infected or colonized with MRSA often are placed in isolation as a measure to prevent the spread of MRSA. This can allow the infections to spread and sometimes become life-threatening. MRSA infections can resist the effects of many common antibiotics, so they're more difficult to treat. People who use illicit injected drugs have a higher risk of MRSA infections. People with HIV have a higher risk of developing MRSA infections. Men who have sex with men have a higher risk of developing MRSA infections. MRSA outbreaks have occurred in military training camps, child care centers and jails. Living in crowded or unsanitary conditions.MRSA can spread easily through cuts and scrapes and skin-to-skin contact. Carriers of MRSA have the ability to spread it, even if they're not sick themselves. Residing in a long-term care facility.Medical tubing - such as intravenous lines or urinary catheters - can provide a pathway for MRSA to travel into your body. MRSA remains a concern in hospitals, where it can attack those most vulnerable - older adults and people with weakened immune systems. ![]() Risk factorsīecause hospital and community strains of MRSA generally occur in different settings, the risk factors for the two strains differ. Bacteria live on an evolutionary fast track, so germs that survive treatment with one antibiotic soon learn to resist others. Even when antibiotics are used appropriately, they contribute to the rise of drug-resistant bacteria because they don't destroy every germ they target. For years, antibiotics have been prescribed for colds, flu and other viral infections that don't respond to these drugs. MRSA is the result of decades of often unnecessary antibiotic use. The bacteria are generally harmless unless they enter the body through a cut or other wound, and even then they usually cause only minor skin problems in healthy people.Īccording to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, around 5% of the population chronically carries the type of staph bacteria known as MRSA. Staph bacteria are normally found on the skin or in the nose of about one-third of the population. Different varieties of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, commonly called "staph," exist.
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