The Uphill Battle with the Superbug

By Dana

Tune in to the news on any given day and you’re likely to find a story about an infectious outbreak somewhere around the globe. Take today, for instance: in today’s news, five infants in Australia have tested positive for MRSA, hospitals in Canada are reporting a rash of rare infections and resistant virus strands that have afflicted 15 people to date, and an Irish hospital is coming under fire for the deaths of 40 patients from a virus outbreak.

These stories can at times strike fear in the hearts of us all, as we saw (today, incidentally) when ears perked up for the story of 15,000 hens slaughtered on an Arkansas farm after exposure to a particularly virulent strain of the bird flu. A collective sigh of relief was breathed after learning that this time, the strain was of no threat to the human population.

It is this endemic fear that is driving companies to create solutions that stave off virus outbreaks. New products, ranging from cleaning solvents and hand wipes to facemasks and antimicrobial mattress pads, crop up all the time and purport to have properties capable of killing these viruses – or at least stopping them in their tracks.

But how many of these “miracle” products are truly effective in preventing the spread of disease, and aren’t just gimmicks that capitalize on the sentiment of an anxious population? And how many of them could well lead to bacterial evolutions and the spawn of even more impervious superbugs? MY personal fear is that counting on these products instead of things like good ol’ fashioned diligent hand washing is going to give these bugs a chance to gear up, mutate, and launch a counter attack on us humans that we’re not going to be able to beat.

Add comment June 6th, 2008