California State Senator Introduces Bill That Would Mandate Reporting of 'Superbug' Infections, Deaths (reuters.com) 75
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A California state senator introduced a bill on Monday that would mandate reporting of antibiotic-resistant infections and deaths and require doctors to record the infections on death certificates when they are a cause of death. The legislation also aims to establish the nation's most comprehensive statewide surveillance system to track infections and deaths from drug-resistant pathogens. Data from death certificates would be used to help compile an annual state report on superbug infections and related deaths. In September, a Reuters investigation revealed that tens of thousands of superbug deaths nationwide go uncounted every year. The infections are often omitted from death certificates, and even when they are recorded, they aren't counted because of the lack of a unified national surveillance system. Because there is no federal surveillance system, monitoring of superbug infections and deaths falls to the states. A Reuters survey of all 50 state health departments and the District of Columbia found that reporting requirements vary widely. Hill's bill would require hospitals and clinical labs to submit an annual summary of antibiotic-resistant infections to the California Department of Health beginning July 1, 2018; amend a law governing death certificates by requiring that doctors specify on death certificates when a superbug was the leading or a contributing cause of death; and require the state Health Department to publish an annual report on resistant infections and deaths, including data culled from death certificates.
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Wait, wait, Trump University of Grenada, or Trump University of Arkham?
Joke? (Score:1)
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Lack of nationwide surveillance? Which satellite did he fell off? I wouldn't suppose a troll would get that high, neither such people tend to joke so hard.
You don't think tracking superbugs is important???
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Pathology and epidemiology something that most advanced nations teach and do well is often not liked in the US.
In the past it tracked pollution related issues. The US private sector and mil did not like that kind of information to be public given the types of exposure workers suffered.
Other nations could then locate US production, factories, workers, the raw materials or advanced materials due to decades of health issues, early deaths.
The open boarders policy that br
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Your entire rant glosses over the very real fact that death certificates are total bullshit. NO ONE ever puts the real cause of death down because no one wants to get sued or get entangled in the ensuing mess. So the standard practice is to put down heart disease or cancer regardless of actual cause.
This measure would be a considerable deviation from current practice.
Truth in death reporting would actually be nice. It will probably set off a shit storm of litigation though.
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Your entire rant glosses over the very real fact that death certificates are total bullshit. NO ONE ever puts the real cause of death down because no one wants to get sued or get entangled in the ensuing mess. So the standard practice is to put down heart disease or cancer regardless of actual cause.
This measure would be a considerable deviation from current practice.
Truth in death reporting would actually be nice. It will probably set off a shit storm of litigation though.
There are many reasons why people don't put down the "real" cause of death on a death certificate.
One reason is that they don't know the cause of death. You can't confidently determine the cause of death without an autopsy, and sometimes not even then.
They have an immediate cause of death, and an underlying cause of death, and usually several conditions that the patient suffered from, most of which could have contributed to the death.
For example, the immediate cause of death could be heart failure, with an
Sorry. Do you not have this???? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean seriously? Do you not have a mandated system of reporting super bugs, infectious disease breakouts, and other nasties?
Re:Sorry. Do you not have this???? (Score:5, Insightful)
"superbug" is not a medical term, neither is "other nasties". The first is sensationalist journalist's term, the second came out of your ass. If the language on the bill contains the word "superbug" the senator should be intravenously fed goat shit.
Proving that death was indeed caused by a multi-drug resistant strain is not trivial in many cases, the testing for that post-mortem would need technical standards that are not always agreed upon
Re:Sorry. Do you not have this???? (Score:5, Informative)
Sigh, seriously is it necessary to use muti-drug resistant strain when common parlance is superbug? Would you have preferred that I listed the medical names or each and everything thing that should have mandatory reporting associated with it? As for proving it's presence I'm sorry but that is just bullshit. One of the good things about MRSA is that it is easily detectable. It doesn't need to be the case of it being the deciding cause of death. It is enough if it is even present.
Here perhaps this will help you. This is what other countries have managed to agree upon as a notification regime.
Group A - Immediate Notification - Anthrax Botulism Chikungunya virus infection Cholera Diphtheria Food or water borne illness (2 or more related cases) Haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) Haemophilus influenzae type b infection (Hib) (epiglottitis, meningitis and other invasive infections) Hepatitis A Japanese encephalitis Legionellosis Measles Meningococcal infection (invasive) Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS CoV) Murray Valley encephalitis virus Paratyphoid Plague Poliovirus infection Rabies Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) Smallpox Tularaemia Typhoid Viral haemorrhagic fevers Yellow fever
Group B - 5 days in writing - Arbovirus infection – other Barmah Forest virus infection Brucellosis Campylobacteriosis Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (classical/ variant) Cryptosporidiosis Dengue virus infection Hepatitis B (newly acquired/ unspecified) Hepatitis C (newly acquired/ unspecified) Hepatitis D Hepatitis E
Hepatitis viral (not further specified) Influenza (laboratory confirmed) (types A and B) Kunjin virus infection Lead (blood lead > 5 g/dL) Leprosy Leptospirosis Listeriosis Lyssavirus (incl. Australian bat lyssavirus) Malaria Mumps Mycobacterium ulcerans Pertussis Pneumococcal infection (invasive) Psittacosis (ornithosis) Q fever Ross River virus infection Rubella (incl. congenital rubella syndrome) Salmonellosis Shigatoxin and verotoxin producing Esherichia coli (STEC/VTEC) Shigellosis Tetanus Tuberculosis (pulmonary/ extrapulmonary) Varicella (chickenpox/herpes zoster [shingles])
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Sigh, seriously is it necessary to use muti-drug resistant strain when common parlance is superbug?
When legislating, common parlance should be avoided every time.
"Well regulated" was common parlance when the constitution was written, and loosely meant "in working order."
Now the leftists argue that a ban on public gun ownership is consitutional under the premise that "well regulated" now means "State controlled."
So fuck off with your stupid ideas about how legislation should be worded. Before long, "superbug" will mean something different, moron.
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How about fuck off with your comprehension fail. I never once proposed legislative wording, but referred to an informal communication method on a general forum.
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I never once proposed legislative wording, but referred to an informal communication method on a general forum.
You replied to someone criticizing its possible use in the legislation, and within that reply you defended its use in a completely unqualified manner.
Maye you should learn how to follow along before trying to discuss things on a "general forum."
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Sure, God knows we don't want the peasants to actually understand the law of the land. We should probably write laws in Latin.
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Here perhaps this will help you. This is what other countries have managed to agree upon as a notification regime.
(Sigh.) Here's an internet phenomenon. Somebody does a Google search, finds something he doesn't understand, and pastes it into a comment.
This isn't a list of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, it's a list of reportable emerging tropical diseases. You don't seem to understand the difference between bacteria and viruses.
This list doesn't even include methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), or Clostridium difficile, which is what we're talking about. http://www.reuters.com/investi... [reuters.com]
Let me guess: You
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What I was getting at was that there was an objection to my use of the term superbug and the term "other nasties" in a common speech setting. I'm not proposing the legislative wording. I got annoyed at the pretentiousness of the comment that implied that by using common parlance in an internet forum I was somehow implying that that common parlance should be used in the legislation or that I am unable to comprehend the implications of legislation.
I then decided to use the list of reportable diseases that a
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This strikes me as an attempt to create a BSA
BSAA - Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance
Also, Rebecca Chambers > Claire Redfield > Jill Valentine > Ada Wong
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MRSA the primary "super"bug is usually identified in the lab. A culture is taken and it is then grown. That culture is then exposed to various antibiotics and its sensitivity to those drugs is then reported back to the treating physician.
In some cases a bacterial infection is so severe or fast moving that this process takes too long. But it can usually be done within 24 hours. Unfortunately I am personally familiar with the process as my daughter gets urinary tract infections that move to her kidneys.
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MRSA can be identified by PCR [wikipedia.org]. No need to wait days for cultures to grow.
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Staphylococcus Aureus can be identified using PCR. But we don't know all the genetic variations that enable antibiotic resistance, or how resistant these strains are. That can only be determined via cultures.
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Pretty sure the cultures are needed to determine resistance / sensitivity to drugs. PCR detects SA in general.
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Proving that death was indeed caused by a multi-drug resistant strain is not trivial in many cases, the testing for that post-mortem would need technical standards that are not always agreed upon
Yep most people of complications like pneumonia rather than the original infection.
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This is the United States of America, and I'm sure there are tons of congressmen who have taken lots of money from the health care industry to block any such regulation. The same congressmen who push laws that investigate women who've had miscarriages because of the possibility that they were really self-induced abortions.
Here in Texas, there's a woman doing 20 years for aborting her
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So the US gov altered a lot of reportable health issues from the watch lists.
Pathology and epidemiology at a US state and federal level was getting weak and lacked basic collection of stats most nations always collect and publish.
"Medical Examination of Aliens-Revisions to Medical Screening Process"
https://www.federalregister.g [federalregister.gov]
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It's not entirely a mystery. One reason has been mentioned several times above, but needs to be clarified. Immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, bring in diseases. Several years ago this was a major political issue, with Democrats (who want open borders to get more votes) and anarchist/libertarians (who want no restrictions on movement on ideological grounds) favoring unlimited immigration. Those partisans denied the disease importation claims and decried the claims as racist and xenophobic, and then t
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First, this isn't the United States we're talking about. This is the State of California, proposing legislation for its own state jurisdiction.
Second, the United States has a thing you may have heard of called the Centers for Disease Control. The CDC does in fact have a list of notifiable diseases, which you can see here [cdc.gov]. Vancomycin-resistant infections are on that list, vancomycin being one of the "last resort" antibiotics used to treat severe, resistant staphylococcus aureus and clostridium difficile infe
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I am aware of the CDC, but I guess my surprise just moves to a different area. As in if there is a federal requirement for these diseases to be notified, why doesn't the states have full access to that information?
I live in a federation made up of separate states as well. Each state has its own government and there is continual stress between the State and the Federal govt regarding authority. Health is funded at the state level for example. But the reporting of these types of diseases is mandated at a
Re: Undocumented Diseases (Score:1)
There's a place in space where the naked ladies pace, and they're not ones to care if you steal their underwear.
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Think of all the scientific and cultural enrichment for the US doctors.
Why even track or report the issues when free US medical care will help every illegal migrant?
Better keep tracking the tuberculosis, leprosy, syphilis, and gonorrhoea.
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Mr Bannon, you're needed in the Oval Office.
See no problem with this. (Score:2, Interesting)
Dead people have much less rights to privacy. While I do have a problem with the surveillance state we live under, I see no problem with disclosing the cause of death that could potentially end many other lives. In any case, this type of disclosure makes much more sense than NSA recording every fucking digital thing we do.
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Every bug hunt is days of profit bed closures, expensive and excessive ward and room cleaning, boring staff training, waiting for results often by expensive outside labs.
The word accreditation costs a lot when the hospital has a small self accredited lab thats always worked well.
Fancy equipment and international standards then get mentioned in reports that show profitable local hospitals as having issues.
State and
My mom died of a "superbug" (Score:3)
She went in with heart issues but it was the "superbug" that killed her.
I was so pissed that it was not mentioned on the death certificate, just the heart issues.
It is debatable if the heart issues would not have killed her anyway, but it was the infection that killed her.
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Hmm, I try my best to stay out of hospitals - this is one reason.
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Everything Old is New Again (Score:3)
The Andromeda Strain was published in 1969.
The United States has some disease reporting, it started at least 75 years ago before the antibiotic bubble. This CDC Report [cdc.gov] summarizes the present state of disease reporting, in two pages. We need higher standards of reporting and legal penalties for failure to report.
The incomming administration here in the states (Score:2)
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Mandate reporting when antibiotics are prescribed. (Score:4, Insightful)
The other factor is the unconscionable "prophylactic" use of antibiotics in farm animals to sustain flocks in overcrowded conditions and stimulate weight gain in cattle.
You, or someone you love, *will* develop an opportunistic, difficult to treat infection as a result of trying to keep beef and chicken prices low.
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Yes. But we need to be aware that man is not the only source of antibiotics. They naturally occur. We get a good lot of them from plants and bacteria, starting of course with penicilin which we got from mold, and which was already present on salted food and damp environments. What we did was to make antibiotics present in organisms other than their natural sources.
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I've noticed there has been a coordinated media effort to lay blame on doctors(not that they are without blame in this mess) and on purchasing antibiotics from Mexico, etc.
However, isn't the majority of antibiotic use in AG?
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...overprescribing of antibiotics by physicians, especially when a patient obviously has a virus for which an antibiotic is useless...
The reason antibiotics are prescribed in the case of viral disease is to prevent secondary infections. I'm not going to start second-guessing physicians who have extensive training in the matter.
I acquired a MRSA soft tissue infection several years ago while in my local hospital. It wasn't pleasant. Now that I'm on the "MRSA list", though, I always get a single room when I'm hospitalized, and that's pretty sweet.
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I acquired a MRSA soft tissue infection several years ago while in my local hospital. It wasn't pleasant. Now that I'm on the "MRSA list", though, I always get a single room when I'm hospitalized, and that's pretty sweet.
That's really interesting. I have a friend who recently told me that he contracted such an infection when he was injured once, and now he's at a high risk of getting infected again anytime his skin is breached. He just scraped his knee falling off a skateboard and ended up having to go in to the clinic for IV antibiotics. Seems he's colonized with the stuff. I never realized that's something that could happen.