(SIOUX CITY, IA) Bacteria gone wild. It's a growing concern at hospitals and doctor's offices. The CDC says the latest strain kills half of the people it infects.
Iowa's state epidemiologist confirms the latest super bug is infecting patients in the state but he won't say where or how many people.
So what are local medical experts doing to stop the spread of this super bug?
Bacteria. Organisms so small they can't be seen by the naked eye. Even so, they're very powerful.
"If you're going to have a war the first thing you do is send out your scouts and your spy. If they got more troops than you do, you send up a white flag and surrender. The bacteria have more troops than we do," says Dr. Tom Benzoni, with Mercy Medical Hospitals Emergency Department.
You see labels that promise to kill 99.9% of germs but what happens to the .1% that survives?
That's what can turn into a super bug. The latest one is known as CRE or carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae. A bacteria that's resistant to almost all drugs.
"Its been occurring nation wide in facilities in medical care facilities sounds like there have been a little bit here in Iowa and its becoming more and more common," says Tyler Brock, Laboratory Director at Siouxland District Health Department.
Certain bacteria like the super bug build up a resistance to antibiotics and Brock says it's partly because Doctors and patients aren't using medication correctly.
"Whether it's for infections that don't really warrant a particular antibiotic or whether it's a person who doesn't finish an antibiotic that they are prescribed, there's several different factors that go into this," says Brock.
"Once they learn how to resist an antibiotic, they can teach their children and they can teach their neighbors and they can teach their relatives and they can teach other bacteria not in their family how to resist that same antibiotic," says Dr. Benzoni.
Which is one reason why hospitals like Mercy Medical and St. Luke's are on alert.
"We put the patients in precautions, use good hand washing, wear gowns and gloves when we're interacting with the patients so we're protecting our other patients from getting infected," says Dina Irwin, an Infection Preventionist at St. Luke's Hospital in Sioux City.
And in case you missed it...
"Washing your hands is absolutely the number one thing you can do to prevent infection," says Irwin.
Bottom line - trying to kill all bacteria is nearly impossible and trying to do so can make the ones that survive even stronger and much more deadly.
Hleigh@siouxlandnews.com
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