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Saturday, June 5, 2010

Canada : Superbug stalks the North

Via Winnipeg Free Press, MRSA's wrath is being felt in Canada :

" At first, Lucien Kabvitok thought his son’s leg might be broken. "He was complaining and crying. He couldn’t stretch out his left leg." Three weeks later, four-year-old Denzel was dead.

An autopsy showed his body had been invaded by the superbug MRSA, which is better known for causing nasty skin boils.

Kabvitok had never heard of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus before the bacteria felled his son, and the Inuit boy did not suffer from boils.

But the germ was already running rampant in his home town of Arviat, Nunavut — as it is in many northern communities with poor living conditions.

MRSA used to affect mainly elderly people in hospitals and nursing homes, but a more vicious strain that spreads in the community is showing up in otherwise healthy children."

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