Bacteria scare puts schools on alert.

Byline: Anne Williams The Register-Guard

In the wake of high-profile outbreaks at schools elsewhere in the nation, some Lane County school districts are stepping up efforts to disinfect potential problem areas and educate staff members, students and parents about good hygiene.

The Eugene School District will convene a task force this week to discuss how to respond to growing concerns over methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a potentially deadly bacteria that can cause infections in the body and is difficult to treat because it has become resistant to conventional antibiotics.

"This really is a precautionary, preventive step to see if we can get ahead of the game," said Superintendent George Russell, who heard a lot about the issue during a recent meeting on the East Coast, where at least two students have died from MRSA in recent weeks. "We want to look at what we are doing, what kinds of things we ought to be thinking about doing, making sure we're on top of it."

The group will include representatives from the district's health services, athletics, facilities and instruction departments, as well as the Lane County Public Health Department. Russell said he expects the group to meet once or twice.

"I hope they'll get together and come up with some reasonable precautions to make sure we're being prudent about how we handle these things and being aware of what we need to do if this surfaces in our schools," said Russell, who wasn't aware of any recent MRSA cases in the district.

At Willamette High School in Eugene's Bethel School District, meanwhile, Principal Jim Jamieson sent a memo to staff members on Oct. 22 after a student was diagnosed with MRSA.

Calling it "neither a crisis nor an emergency," he advised them to answer any student questions "factually and calmly," refer any student with open wounds or infections to the school nurse immediately, and encourage students to regularly wash their hands.

Following the protocol recommended by Lane County Public Health, the student was not suspended, nor were other parents or students notified, he said.

MRSA is not considered a "reportable" disease, said Betsy Meredith, Lane County's communicable disease nursing adviser. Reportable diseases, which include tuberculosis and salmonella, pose a significant risk to public health and may be prevented from being spread by determining where the individual has been and who may have been exposed.

The Willamette student did miss some school, Jamieson said, but that decision was up to her family and physician. Her parents weren't even required to notify the school but did so, he said. Custodians disinfected all surfaces in the girl's classroom, he said - another step recommended by public health officials.

"We treat this as serious but not alarming," Jamieson said.

Other schools across the nation have taken more drastic measures: notifying parents, closing their doors, disinfecting from top to bottom, and canceling events. Meredith said that, while it's something to take very seriously, MRSA should not prompt hysteria.

For one thing, it's unavoidable - an estimated one out of every three or four people is colonized in the nose with staph bacteria at any given time, although it's not known how much of that is MRSA.

"The main thing to keep in mind from the public health standpoint is it's a little different than other, reportable conditions because it's so prevalent in the community," Meredith said. "So many people are carriers of staphylococcus aureus, and you don't always treat that. The prevention messages are the very basic messages: careful hand-washing, covering your wounds. It's the basic hygiene things. There is no magic bullet, there is not a vaccine."

Staph bacteria, including MRSA, can cause skin infections that may resemble a pimple or boil and can be red, swollen, painful or have pus and other drainage.

Bethel school nurse Annemarie Hirsch said she believes that most cases of MRSA go unreported, although Willamette's was not the first that's been reported to the district.

"We've had other cases of MRSA," she said. "We recognize that MRSA is everywhere and encourage people to wash their hands and just realize that everybody needs to take measures to protect themselves from all infectious diseases."

Karen Brist, coordinator for health services in the Springfield district, echoed that. Last month, she distributed a letter to district parents describing the most common ways infections occur, how MRSA is treated and what steps can be taken to prevent its spread.

She said she knows of three or four confirmed cases in Springfield schools so far this year, some at elementary schools, and said there's been at least one case each year for the past several years. She doesn't believe that there's been a single case of MRSA spreading to another student or staff member.

"As far as we know, (students) are not picking it up at school. They're picking it up other places and bringing it to school," she said.

Matt Binkerd, athletic director at Springfield High School, said he and his staff plan to disinfect certain equipment, such as weight-room benches and wrestling mats, more frequently. Because of the potential for abrasions and injuries among athletes, those surfaces are riskier for MRSA and other infections. "We're taking a few more precautions," he said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MRSA has been around for many years, mostly in hospitals and other health care settings, but is becoming more common in the general community. An estimated 94,360 people in the United States developed a serious MRSA infection in 2005, and about 18,650 died from the infection.