My sister’s needless suffering and death from MRSA

IN evidence to the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee, Professor Brendan Drumm, chief executive of the HSE, last week stated: “The high prevalence of MRSA on our streets, as we speak, related to antibiotic use over the years.”

Many health professionals have been content to let the impression persist that a large proportion of the population are carriers of MRSA.

This is a fallacy. The Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention in Atlanta states that while up to 30% of people are carriers of SA, 29% carry the antibiotic-susceptible form MSSA and only 1% carry the resistant strain MRSA — the superbug. The existence of MRSA is indeed due to overuse and misuse of antibiotics. However, MRSA has to be acquired from some source — overwhelmingly, our hospitals and particularly intensive care units.

Professor Drumm said: “We are hoping over a five-year period to aim to reduce by 20% the isolates of MRSA in our system, but this will be slow progress.” Hospitals in other countries have massively reduced the incidence of MRSA.

In a recent study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, routine MRSA admission cultures and contact isolation precautions resulted in a 67% hospital-wide reduction in MRSA bacteraemia (blood poisoning) in 16 months.

The needless death of my sister Barbara and the deaths and suffering of many thousands more is set to be repeated. To use my brother, Fr Brendan’s, word — this is obscene.

Kieran Forde

5 Carrighill

Calverstown

Kilcullen

Co Kildare.