Hundreds Attend Info Meeting in Wyoming Area

Oct 25, 07:04 AM

Current Headlines: By Jeremy Grad, The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

Oct. 25--EXETER -- Hundreds of parents packed the auditorium of the Wyoming Area Secondary Center Wednesday night as the district addressed concerns in an informational meeting about a potentially deadly bacterium that may infest district schools.

A student at the district contracted the infection three weeks ago, recovered and has since returned to class. The meeting was held to assist parents in preventing their children from acquiring methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.

It is a mutated strand of bacterium resistant to normal antibiotic treatment -- it is deadly.

Tempers flared at the meeting as parents shouted questions, often several at the same time, at a panel of district officials and medical experts. One man briefly interrupted the meeting before Superintendent Raymond Bernardi stepped in to restore order.

William Miller, Pennsylvania Department of Health district epidemiologist manager for Northeast Pennsylvania, was one of the medical professionals to address the parents.

Miller said he is the person responsible for identifying outbreaks of disease and controlling those outbreaks. An outbreak is declared when two or more unrelated people contract the same infectious disease.

"Staph can be resistant to antibiotics," Miller said. "That does not mean it is not treatable and curable. It just means it is resistant to a particular class of antibiotic."

Miller noted that at any time between 20 percent and 50 percent of people are infected with a type of staph bacteria and that 1 percent of people are infected with MRSA. How the body responds to that infection is largely determined by the immune systems of the people infected.

He offered some practical advice for parents to give their children to avoid MRSA: wash your hands, cover skin traumas, avoid sharing towels, and avoid sharing razors or bottles. Miller said MRSA infections, which can look like acne or an insect bite, are "often red, swollen and painful."

Dr. Lucy Sciandra, Wyoming Valley Disease Infection Control Associate, said bacteria are becoming "smarter and smarter and becoming resistant."

She said MRSA can live on a wet, hard surface for up to a month. Sciandra said the MRSA strand has existed since the 1960s and has an incubation period of 24 to 48 hours. She suggested that parents sterilize surfaces in their own homes by adding a tablespoon of bleach into a quart of water and pouring that into a spray can that can be used to clean home surfaces. She echoed Miller's advice to parents.

"It (MRSA) needs to get in through a break in your skin," Sciandra said. "Don't touch your eyes. Don't touch your nose. Wash your hands!"

Sciandra said parents should only become alarmed about the possibility of MRSA infection if the skin trauma doesn't go away within two days. She said that although previous staph infections do not make a person more susceptible to MRSA infection, a compromised immune system does.

She added that if a suspected infected area does get bigger, it should not be squeezed as the pressure can force bacteria into the bloodstream -- making the infection much harder to cure.

On several occasions parents disrupted the meeting by yelling that there was no soap in certain school bathrooms. Carl Yorina, Wyoming Area facilities manager, disputed that claim, "hand soap is readily available in our schools."

Bernardi said the district is doing everything it can to inform parents about the potential MRSA danger.

The district took appropriate action, Bernardi said. "Sunday afternoon I found out. Wednesday afternoon I have a panel of experts here." The comment led to a round of applause by the majority of the parents.

The panel consisted of three physicians, three nurses, a clinical specialist, a manager of infectious disease control and an epidemiologist.

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