I'm just full of good news this morning - my wife sent me this link about a new strain of drug resistant staph that's been spotted in the US for the first time:

A strain of drug-resistant staph identified in pigs in the Netherlands five years ago, which accounts for nearly one third of all staph in humans there, has been found in the U.S. for the first time, according to a new study.

This brought to mind a truly terrifying thing I read about hospital scrubs (and doctor's lab coats) recently - it made the point that many of the nasty bacteria that hang around hospitals get on scrubs - which doctors and other staff are increasingly wearing outside of work. It also pointed out that fewer hospitals were laundering these things for the staff (as part of cost savings measures - and this was true both in the US and elsewhere), and you set up some really ugly possibilities.

The good news is that there's a fairly simple fix: have hospitals launder the uniforms and lab coats, and make it policy that staff can't wear them outside of the hospital. That simple policy seems to yield very good results:

Until about 20 years ago, nearly all hospitals laundered scrubs for their staff. A few hospitals are returning to that policy. St. Mary's Health Center in St. Louis, Mo., reduced infections after cesarean births by more than 50% by giving all caregivers hospital-laundered scrubs, as well as requiring them to wear two layers of gloves. Monroe Hospital in Bloomington, Ind., which has a near-zero rate of hospital-acquired infections, provides laundered scrubs for all staff and prohibits them from wearing scrubs outside the building. Stamford Hospital in Connecticut recently banned wearing scrubs outside the hospital.

This makes me wonder whether the decision to stop laundering was done by a accountants - I'm sure it looked brilliant on a spreadsheet.

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