MRSA outbreak in Prison, near epidemic level

MRSA Outbreak
An emergency exists in that a deadly strain of MRSA is traveling throughout the prison and jail system at an alarming rate and little or nothing is being done about it. Not only has CCPOA, the prison guard’s union, filed a lawsuit about it infecting 13 guards at Old Folsom Prison, but the California Nurses, Fire Department and others are up in arms about the risks to their employees on high alert. We cannot for the life of us comprehend how something this important, on a level with meningitis, known to be spreading throughout Old Folsom since April, didn’t surface in the media until last week.

It spreads like wildfire through handshaking or any type of physical contact, on surfaces such as light switches, door knobs, fibers such as clothing and bedding, even curtains. At least 8500 cases have been reported at the Los Angeles County jail since I first started mentioning this type of staph, which is an antibiotic-resistant bacteria. As these prisoners have been moved to the various institutions, the disease has spread to workers and inmates, to their families who visit and out into the community through the guards and medical workers. It is the one time when everyone at risk is united in agreement that this is a crisis which deserves to be a top priority with all those posturing concern for medical care.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) often joins the UNION in solidarity, especially for the reasons around this rally, and as were leaving at about 1:45 PM a number of them in their classic purple shirts showed up. However, their late arrival yesterday should not be a measure of how frequently some of the SEIU members work with us behind the scenes, the many phone calls being made to share information, and the cooperation between our UNION and theirs in working to get anti-bacterial cleaners to prisoners.

You heard me right folks.

In spite of many epidemics such as MRSA, filth diseases such as the Norovirus and many others raging throughout these disease hotboxes, the prisoners are not allowed bacterial cleaners. Their laundry is not washed and dried properly, crammed into washers and dryers and coming back full or urine, it’s a sanitation crisis that Sillen has acknowledged but so far, no program of prevention or educating the prisoners of what is taking place has been instituted that we can see.

This summary of MRSA was translated by a hospital administrator who is a hardworking member of our UNION living in the Netherlands where there quick response to outbreaks and vigilance makes them a world leader in low incidence of infectious disease in institutions. Please mail it into at least one prisoner and to prison or jail warden in at least one of the prisons and jails before its spread into the community results in more deaths, a quarantine which means no visits and refusal of medical workers to enter infected prisons. One person lost a finger from MRSA, another person told me that they had to have it dug out of their eye. MRSA is a flesh-eating bacteria which cannot be cured in many cases. Do the mailing and pass this word widely as we need to educate ourselves and others when the Government refuses to do it.

Print off and mail this page to at least one prisoner so they can have a prayer to save themselves from this dreadful,ofen incurable, flesh-eating bacteria