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PRESS CONTACT: |
Health-care providers need to be aware that MRSA can cause skin infections among otherwise healthy newborn babies.
Health-care providers need to be aware that methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) can cause skin infections among otherwise healthy newborns. In two independent investigations by local health departments, assisted by CDC, into outbreaks of MRSA skin infections among otherwise healthy, full-term newborns, MRSA transmission likely occurred in the newborn nurseries in hospitals. The MRSA strain identified in the outbreaks was one that was described initially in association with community-associated MRSA infections and that differs from predominant health-care-associated MRSA strains. The findings from the investigations also underscore the importance of adhering to standard infection-control practices in newborn nurseries.
PRESS CONTACT: |
Intensive efforts by local, state, and national public health officials helped to successfully ensure the continued treatment of New Orleans, Louisiana, residents who had been on treatment for TB disease when Hurricane Katrina struck.
Forty-five days after the hurricane, all 130 patients who had been receiving treatment for TB disease were back in care. While most patients (52 percent) remained in Louisiana, almost one-third (30 percent) relocated to Texas, and the remaining 18 percent were found in other states. Patients were located through a combination of traditional methods, such as phone and field outreach and innovative approaches, including cross-matching patient names with online evacuee registries, relief agency roosters, and recent prescription activity records from other states. CDC and the National TB Controllers Association also established a special Katrina TB help desk in Atlanta to facilitate communication about missing patients across states. The findings underscore the critical need for all states to build and maintain the public health capacity to ensure completion of TB treatment, which requires a multi-drug regimen for at least 6 months. TB control programs should also consider developing contingency plans for responding to emergencies that may result in mass displacement of patients.
PRESS CONTACT: |
Improved promotion, protection and support of breastfeeding is necessary, especially for mothers with less than a high school education, who are black, reside in rural areas, are poor or are teens.
Black children in the United States are less likely to have been breastfed than white children despite recent reductions in racial and economic disparities. The racial disparity is independent of poverty status or mother’s education. When black children are breastfed, they are less likely to still be breastfed at 6 months. This puts black children at increased health risk including ear infections, respiratory tract infections, diarrhea, and obesity. Breastfeeding is recommended for at least the first year of life by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Barriers to breastfeeding include lack of social support, inadequate guidance from health-care providers, insufficient postpartum follow-up care, and disruptive hospital maternity care (e.g., delays in breastfeeding initiation, use of pacifiers by newborns, and promotion of commercial infant formula through the provision of free infant formula in discharge packs). Evidence-based efforts to promote, protect, and support breastfeeding are vitally necessary. Groups with the lowest rates should be targeted, including black, poor, and teen mothers; mothers with less than a high school education; and mothers residing in rural areas.
No Summary Available
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Contact Us This page last reviewed March 31, 2006 Centers for
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