USA TODAY reporter Peter Eisler reveals that new, “community” strains of MRSA are striking far more often than government statistics suggest, posing a grave public health threat that has gone largely unrecognized and unaddressed. Using previously untapped state and federal data, Eisler shows that hundreds of thousands of MRSA infections from these strains go unreported and untracked each year by public health agencies. As a result, policy makers and the medical establishment have been slow to react as MRSA bacteria, which used to strike exclusively in hospitals, have cropped up increasingly in community settings — athletic facilities, prisons, schools — to attack young, otherwise healthy victims. Eisler’s detailed reporting, built around a compellingeadly cluster of community MRSA cases in Kentucky, explains how and why the medical world is struggling to find ways to control this new epidemic. He pieces together state and federal data, academic studies and epidemiological reports to explain how MRSA has evolved, how and where it spreads, and why it’s so difficult to combat. He also tracks the emergence of a new community-associated MRSA strain that causes a particularly deadly pneumonia that hospitals are seeing with increasing frequency.
Key findings: — Using hospital billing data, Eisler revealed that federal incidence statistics exclude more than 375,000 community-associated MRSA cases each year that are serious enough to require hospital care. — With no reliable tracking system to identify where and when outbreaks are occurring, Eisler found, public health officials have little understanding of how and why community MRSA is spreading – or where. — The lack of reliable data on community MRSA infections has left public health agencies with no workable plan for controlling the epidemic, Eisler showed, and the consequences are especially profound among children. Eisler’s report, including a powerful on-line video and a reader-friendly sidebar on community settings where MRSA is most likely to emerge, prompted immediate calls for better outbreak reporting systems. It’s been hailed by patient advocates and public health professionals as a call to action for the medical community and an important step in educating the public in how to reduce the chances of contracting MRSA infections. In the best traditions of health reporting, Eisler exposed a major public health threat that was hidden from public view, documented its impact, and fueled calls for new efforts to see that it’s addressed.