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California State Senator Introduces Bill That Would Mandate Reporting of 'Superbug' Infections, Deaths (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A California state senator introduced a bill on Monday that would mandate reporting of antibiotic-resistant infections and deaths and require doctors to record the infections on death certificates when they are a cause of death. The legislation also aims to establish the nation's most comprehensive statewide surveillance system to track infections and deaths from drug-resistant pathogens. Data from death certificates would be used to help compile an annual state report on superbug infections and related deaths. In September, a Reuters investigation revealed that tens of thousands of superbug deaths nationwide go uncounted every year. The infections are often omitted from death certificates, and even when they are recorded, they aren't counted because of the lack of a unified national surveillance system. Because there is no federal surveillance system, monitoring of superbug infections and deaths falls to the states. A Reuters survey of all 50 state health departments and the District of Columbia found that reporting requirements vary widely. Hill's bill would require hospitals and clinical labs to submit an annual summary of antibiotic-resistant infections to the California Department of Health beginning July 1, 2018; amend a law governing death certificates by requiring that doctors specify on death certificates when a superbug was the leading or a contributing cause of death; and require the state Health Department to publish an annual report on resistant infections and deaths, including data culled from death certificates.
Trump University.
I mean seriously? Do you not have a mandated system of reporting super bugs, infectious disease breakouts, and other nasties?
"superbug" is not a medical term, neither is "other nasties". The first is sensationalist journalist's term, the second came out of your ass. If the language on the bill contains the word "superbug" the senator should be intravenously fed goat shit.
Proving that death was indeed caused by a multi-drug resistant strain is not trivial in many cases, the testing for that post-mortem would need technical standards that are not always agreed upon
Dead people have much less rights to privacy. While I do have a problem with the surveillance state we live under, I see no problem with disclosing the cause of death that could potentially end many other lives. In any case, this type of disclosure makes much more sense than NSA recording every fucking digital thing we do.
This is the United States of America, and I'm sure there are tons of congressmen who have taken lots of money from the health care industry to block any such regulation. The same congressmen who push laws that investigate women who've had miscarriages because of the possibility that they were really self-induced abortions.
Here in Texas, there's a woman doing 20 years for aborting her own baby. We're a nation governed by savages who wrap themselves in "God's Will". Here in Texas, it's easier to open a gun superstore than it is to open a free clinic for women.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Mr Bannon, you're needed in the Oval Office.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Sigh, seriously is it necessary to use muti-drug resistant strain when common parlance is superbug? Would you have preferred that I listed the medical names or each and everything thing that should have mandatory reporting associated with it? As for proving it's presence I'm sorry but that is just bullshit. One of the good things about MRSA is that it is easily detectable. It doesn't need to be the case of it being the deciding cause of death. It is enough if it is even present.
Here perhaps this will help you. This is what other countries have managed to agree upon as a notification regime.
Group A - Immediate Notification - Anthrax Botulism Chikungunya virus infection Cholera Diphtheria Food or water borne illness (2 or more related cases) Haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) Haemophilus influenzae type b infection (Hib) (epiglottitis, meningitis and other invasive infections) Hepatitis A Japanese encephalitis Legionellosis Measles Meningococcal infection (invasive) Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS CoV) Murray Valley encephalitis virus Paratyphoid Plague Poliovirus infection Rabies Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) Smallpox Tularaemia Typhoid Viral haemorrhagic fevers Yellow fever
Group B - 5 days in writing - Arbovirus infection – other Barmah Forest virus infection Brucellosis Campylobacteriosis Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (classical/ variant) Cryptosporidiosis Dengue virus infection Hepatitis B (newly acquired/ unspecified) Hepatitis C (newly acquired/ unspecified) Hepatitis D Hepatitis E
Hepatitis viral (not further specified) Influenza (laboratory confirmed) (types A and B) Kunjin virus infection Lead (blood lead > 5 g/dL) Leprosy Leptospirosis Listeriosis Lyssavirus (incl. Australian bat lyssavirus) Malaria Mumps Mycobacterium ulcerans Pertussis Pneumococcal infection (invasive) Psittacosis (ornithosis) Q fever Ross River virus infection Rubella (incl. congenital rubella syndrome) Salmonellosis Shigatoxin and verotoxin producing Esherichia coli (STEC/VTEC) Shigellosis Tetanus Tuberculosis (pulmonary/ extrapulmonary) Varicella (chickenpox/herpes zoster [shingles])
She went in with heart issues but it was the "superbug" that killed her.
I was so pissed that it was not mentioned on the death certificate, just the heart issues.
It is debatable if the heart issues would not have killed her anyway, but it was the infection that killed her.
The Andromeda Strain was published in 1969.
The United States has some disease reporting, it started at least 75 years ago before the antibiotic bubble. This CDC Report summarizes the present state of disease reporting, in two pages. We need higher standards of reporting and legal penalties for failure to report.
Bruce Perens.
MRSA the primary "super"bug is usually identified in the lab. A culture is taken and it is then grown. That culture is then exposed to various antibiotics and its sensitivity to those drugs is then reported back to the treating physician.
In some cases a bacterial infection is so severe or fast moving that this process takes too long. But it can usually be done within 24 hours. Unfortunately I am personally familiar with the process as my daughter gets urinary tract infections that move to her kidneys. Most of them are treatable with cephalixin but once every 2 years or so she will get one that has to be treated with IV anti-biotics. Everytime she gets an infection we get the read on it's sensitivity the next day.
In Australia when an MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) is detected in the lab a central body is notified and a living sample is sent to them for further analysis.
Proving that death was indeed caused by a multi-drug resistant strain is not trivial in many cases, the testing for that post-mortem would need technical standards that are not always agreed upon
Yep most people of complications like pneumonia rather than the original infection.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Pretty sure the cultures are needed to determine resistance / sensitivity to drugs. PCR detects SA in general.
How about fuck off with your comprehension fail. I never once proposed legislative wording, but referred to an informal communication method on a general forum.
Let's be completely honest here: overprescribing of antibiotics by physicians, especially when a patient obviously has a virus for which an antibiotic is useless, is partially to blame for the widespread prevalence of MR bugs. Use of specialized, last-resort antibiotics for routine infection is common.
The other factor is the unconscionable "prophylactic" use of antibiotics in farm animals to sustain flocks in overcrowded conditions and stimulate weight gain in cattle.
You, or someone you love, *will* develop an opportunistic, difficult to treat infection as a result of trying to keep beef and chicken prices low.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
The National Healthcare Safety Network (part of the Centers for Disease Control) tracks all kinds of things, including MDROs (Multi-Drug Resistant Organisms). The gentleman from California is just posturing. .
Your entire rant glosses over the very real fact that death certificates are total bullshit. NO ONE ever puts the real cause of death down because no one wants to get sued or get entangled in the ensuing mess. So the standard practice is to put down heart disease or cancer regardless of actual cause.
This measure would be a considerable deviation from current practice.
Truth in death reporting would actually be nice. It will probably set off a shit storm of litigation though.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.