The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology recently conducted a study and found that as many as 13 out of every 1,000 hospital patients in the U.S. are infected with Clostridium difficile, a common and sometimes deadly bacteria that causes diarrhea. This is as much as 20 times greater than previous estimates, and accounts for as many as 7,000 patients on any given day.

Better hygiene and more judicious use of antibiotics will help; however, one of the researchers noted, "Antibiotics don't kill it and most germicides used for environmental cleaning don't kill it. Only bleach does."

APIC's 12,000 members collected data about all of diagnosed C. difficile patients on one day between May and August 2008 at 648 hospitals. They covered 12.5 percent of all U.S. medical facilities including acute care, cancer, cardiac, children's, and rehabilitation hospitals.

The study will be published in the American Journal of Infection Control.

To read more about this study, please visit:
Reuters

Tec Laboratories, Inc., a pharmaceutical company that develops, manufactures and markets innovative over-the-counter drugs and repellent products, produced a video entitled, "MRSA: The Ticking Time Bomb" to educate parents, athletes, athletic trainers and coaches about the dangers of antibiotic resistant staph and how to prevent a staph infection.

The video encourages the following actions to prevent infection and treat wounds:

• apply the proper antiseptic to all wounds and keep them covered
• do not share personal items
• practice good hygiene (shower after exercising and keep hands clean)
• properly clean all athletic equipment after use, and
• consult a physician for all active wounds.

To learn more, please visit:
YouTube

Using satellites, researchers are able to predict cholera outbreaks by monitoring marine environments. This approach could provide an early warning system for places where cholera epidemics occur regularly, such as India and Bangladesh.

Research shows that cholera outbreaks follow seasonal increases in sea temperature. When this occurs, tiny animals, called phytoplankton, increase in number thus bringing the cholera pathogen into the drinking water supply.

Researchers have monitored sea temperature changes in the Bay of Bengal and can predict changes in phytoplankton densities. Phytoplankton are the tiny marine plants which feed ocean ecosystems. Researchers found cholera outbreaks in Calcutta in India and Matlab in Bangladesh occurred soon after seasonal rises in sea temperature and subsequent increases in phytoplankton densities.

The cholera pathogen lives naturally in the gut of a zooplankton species - tiny marine animals called copepods, these feed on the phytoplankton. When sea levels rise, copepods find their way into the water supply in low lying parts of Bangladesh and India. Using simple cloth filters to remove the copepods can reduce the incidence of cholera by 40-50%.

Researchers believe satellite monitoring will help public health authorities pinpoint when to allocate resources and implement warnings about drinking water to help prevent cholera epidemics.

To read more, please visit:
BBC News

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has ordered ten California public drinking water systems to monitor for Escherichia coli (E. coli) in the source water of their drinking water systems. Failure to comply could result in penalties of up to $32,500 per day for each violation.

The EPA is requiring each of the public drinking water systems to develop monitoring plans and conduct pathogen monitoring, which is mandated by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. Monitoring plans are required for all public water systems that obtain their water from a surface source such as a river, lake or a well that is under the influence of surface water.

The public water systems are located in Alpine, Fresno, Glenn, Humboldt and Trinity counties in California.

To read more, please visit:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

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