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: Oct. 18, 2007

New study to prompt aggressive medical reporting plan

Olympia -- Shocking new studies about a dangerous staph bacterium germ spreading across the country will renew legislative efforts to require hospitals to include MRSA and funding for its surveillance, when the Legislature meets in January.

MRSA is a strain of the widespread bacterium that usually causes ‘staph’ infections. The issue came to light earlier this week when a Virginia teenager died of MRSA, prompting officials to shut down 21 Bedford County (VA) schools to prevent further infections. MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus.

Rep. Tom Campbell (R-Roy) had sponsored a new law that passed the Legislature last session to require hospitals to report infections, but much to his displeasure, the MRSA and funding for its surveillance were stripped from the bill in the final days.        

“I’d worked on this legislation for four sessions before we finally made the first giant leap to require hospital-acquired infections reporting,” Campbell said of House Bill 1106). “Now, we’ve got to go the next step to include MRSA and deal with its serious consequences.”

Campbell plans to propose new legislation in January to require reporting of MRSA by hospitals, nursing homes, doctors’ offices and other institutions.    “We can’t just take the narrow view that it’s confined between the walls of the hospitals when it’s coming in as much as it’s going out.”

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association yesterday, 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.

 “We’ve seen the number of cases of antibiotic-resistant staph infections have increased by 476-percent in Pierce County alone, since 2001,” Campbell noted. “There were more than 4,000 cases reported last year.”

The Washington State Legislature convenes for a 60-day session on January, 14, 2008.

#####

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