According to NBC news, Dr. Smith and his colleagues surveyed neonatal intensive care units around the United States from 1997 through 2012 and found that 72%percent of the staph infections are caused by ordinary Staphylococcus aureus germs. Just 28 % were caused by the headline-generating methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA. In fact, more babies die from drug-susceptible staphylococcus than from MRSA. They reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association's JAMA Pediatrics, that it's because regular staph is still far more common than MRSA, one strain is as deadly as the other. They found that between 10 and 12 percent of infants who got infected with either strain of the germ did not survive.
They also explained that low-birthweight infants are the most at risk. Invasive S. aureus infections are most common in infants born at less than 1,500 grams than in those who are born at 1,500 grams or higher," they added.
The Centers for Disease control and Prevention said that more than two million people get infected by drug-resistant germs every year, and 23,000 of those die of their infections. They also found out that one in 25 U.S. hospital patients has caught an infection while in the hospital, CDC says. The most common mode of transmission in the spread of both germs are improperly washed hands, germy stethoscopes and contaminated surfaces.
These results are a reminder that even if MRSA is not a problem on a hospital ward, hygiene is still very important, said Dr. Pablo Sanchez of the Nationwide Children's Hospital at Ohio State University. That's why washing is a must, not just to smell good, but to ward off sickness that can possibly cause death.
