That’s one ugly mite!
While hospitals are usually places of healing, it’s inevitable that they also cause the occasional sickness. Despite the best efforts of medical experts all over the United States, we’re still seeing a concerningly high number of infections starting in hospitals. But infections aren’t the only illness that can start spreading in a hospital.
The main issue is that most health care facilities are usually so swamped because of the large number of patients attending that they can’t really take all the precaution measures they should. On the other hand, there are those precaution measures that would be simply impractical due to the rarity of the conditions they can prevent.
For example, in one of the strangest cases of hospital-related outbreaks in recent history, three New Hampshire hospitals were exposed to scabies. Despite the disease not being anywhere near life-threatening, it can have some unpleasant symptoms, so authorities are doing to best to contain the situation.
According to state epidemiologist Dr. Benjamin Chan,
We are helping to coordinate the extensive efforts by these two facilities by providing consultation and recommendations as they work to quickly reach all persons who may have been affected. Scabies is not a public health threat, but it does cause uncomfortable clinical symptoms, so we want to try and help D-H Manchester and CMC prevent unnecessary infestation amongst their staff, patients, and visitors.
For this, state-wide medical authorities are setting up centers in order to help treat incipient symptoms and even prevent infection and further spread of the intrusive mites. Caused by human itch mite, scabies predictably causes a very intense itching sensation. It also causes an unpleasant pimple-like rash.
It usually spreads through direct and prolonged skin to skin contact, although it can spread much easier in certain cases. These cases include the elderly, debilitated, disabled, or the immunosuppressed, as their form of the disease tends to crust over and spread the mites much faster.
Since it can take up to two months before starting to manifest symptoms, the scabies mites have a high chance of spreading far and wide before the infestation is caught. The medical experts were lucky to even discover the patient which brought the disease into several hospitals unbeknownst to him.
The doctors warn that anyone who visited the D-H Manchester Hematology/Oncology, Pulmonology, and Rheumatology at Notre Dame Pavilion at Catholic Medical Center, the Norris Cotton Infusion Center, Catholic Medical Center, or the Catholic Medical Center Pulmonary Medicine in July, August, opr November 2015, as well as this year, could be infected.
Image source: Wikimedia
