Rep. TOM CAMPBELL (R-Roy)
2nd LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT
Olympia office: 334 John L. O'Brien Building
PO Box 40600 Olympia, WA 98504-0600
Office: (360) 786-7912

For immediate release: Nov 9, 2007

Campbell calls for MRSA as a reportable condition

Olympia -- Rep. Tom Campbell has requested Gov. Chris Gregoire use emergency powers to require the Dept. of Health to list MRSA as a ‘reportable medical condition.’ In a letter to the governor yesterday, Campbell said the issue is too important to wait until the legislature can take it up in January.

Campbell said he believes this health condition is a crisis, “and, therefore, request that you use your emergency executive powers to order the Dept. of Health (DOH) to begin collecting information as a public health emergency,” Campbell wrote the governor.

He noted that many diseases, including measles, are required to be documented by doctors and other health-care practitioners so DOH can create a public report. “MRSA is a very pathogenic organism that kills people, but yet DOH doesn’t require reporting,” Campbell said. “And, it’s not just about washing your hands.”

The illness, MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) made headlines in recent weeks after a man at Harborview Medical Center died of the staph infection, coming to be known as the “superbug.” Last month, a teenager in Virginia died of MRSA, prompting officials to shut down a school to prevent further infections. The MRSA-bacteria is spread by skin-to-skin contact. On the skin, it looks like a boil or a spider bite.

Campbell is drafting legislation to make it reportable that he intends to pre-file in the legislature next month, “and I will follow through with that approach. The public is rightfully asking what their government is doing about this,” he said in his letter to the governor.

Currently, the state doesn’t require doctors or other health-care professionals to document cases of MRSA as it does with other diseases, so there’s no way for the public to have access to the information, Campbell said.

“I am perplexed to explain the (Dept. of Health’s) position to not make this a reportable event,” Campbell said in his request for the governor to exact emergency executive power to require the collection of MRSA information as report it to the public.

Campbell wrote.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last month said the microbe, “a strain of a once innocuous staph bacterium, has become invulnerable to first-line antibiotics.” The report says the staph infection is responsible for more than 94,000 serious infections and nearly 19,000 deaths each year, as calculated by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Campbell noted there were more than 4,000 cases of antibiotic-resistant staph infections reported in Pierce County last year. “That’s a 476-percent increase in Pierce County alone since 2001.”

Attachment 1 - Rep. Campbell’s letter to Gov. Chris Gregoire - 11/8/07)

Attachment 2 - Journal of the American Medical Association link:
Journal of the American Medical Association 2007;298(15):1763-1771.

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Contact: Rep. Tom Campbell at (360) 786-7912 or campbell.tom@leg.wa.gov