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Category Archives: international

January 22, 2010

MRSA in the journal Science – spread, outbreaks and an argument for active surveillance

I have a story tonight at CIDRAP about a paper published this evening in the journal Science. To respect fair use and make sure my colleagues get clicks, I just quote the story here — but then I want to talk about why I think it’s such an important study. A multi-national team of researchers [...]

Written by Maryn McKenna

Also posted in hospitals, infection control, nosocomial, surveillance

December 16, 2009

A plea, and not for me: Support ProMED

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Constant readers, I don’t often ask you for anything — OK, I did ask you to consider an advance buy of SUPERBUG, but that’s a win-win for all of us, right? But today I’m going to ask you for something, and I hope you’ll trust me that it, too, is a win-win all ’round. ProMED Mail, the [...]

Written by Maryn McKenna

Also posted in personal

November 17, 2009

Antibiotic resistance: international news

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Constant readers, we’ve often talked about MRSA and other resistant pathogens as a global problem (cf. these posts for resistance issues in Europe and these for resistance around the world). But now there has been formal recognition that resistant bacteria respect no borders. On Nov. 3, the US government and the European Union signed an agreement [...]

Written by Maryn McKenna

Also posted in Europe, MRSA, legislation

January 13, 2009

Seriously, a global problem

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Serendipitously, as I was preparing the previous post (an intro to GlobalPost.com, which will be featuring posts from SUPERBUG), an auto-push email from the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed service landed in my inbox. For those of you whose bedtime reading is not obscure medical journals (I know: This is what you have me for), PubMed [...]

Written by Maryn McKenna

Also posted in Asia, Europe, MRSA, UK, community, hospitals

November 24, 2008

British infection control: Epic fail

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Via the Guardian comes news that British hospitals are failing miserably at hygiene and infection-control targets set by the Healthcare Commission, a government-funded but independent watchdog agency somewhat analogous to the United States’ Joint Commission (formerly called JCAHO). While community-associated MRSA is still a somewhat new story in the the UK, hospital or nosocomial MRSA is [...]

Written by Maryn McKenna

Also posted in Europe, MRSA, UK, hospitals, infection control, medical errors

November 18, 2008

Contributing to resistance: fake drugs?

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There’s news this morning that Interpol has seized $6.65 million of counterfeit medicines in the culmination of a 5-month undercover investigation that stretched across Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The fakes included purported antiretrovirals for HIV, anti-TB drugs, antimalarials (especially artemisinin) — and, chillingly for our purposes here, fake antibiotics for pneumonia [...]

Written by Maryn McKenna

Also posted in antibiotics, counterfeit, drug development