Does Great Ormond Street take any particular precautions?
Our patients are particularly young and vulnerable to infection, including with S. aureus. A great deal of effort is made to reduce the likelihood of a patient developing infection – most of these interventions are the same whether the child is colonised with MRSA or sensitive S. aureus. However, additional actions are taken to reduce the likelihood of MRSA transmitting from one patient to another (‘cross-infection’). To do this we screen inpatients on admission to identify carriers of MRSA. Additional isolation procedures are then used to prevent the MRSA being passed on to others. This is one of the reasons why our record on preventing cross infection is relatively good. When a child is shown to have most likely acquired MRSA while in the hospital we investigate the event to prevent it happening again. This involves reviewing infection control procedures and screening for an unknown source among patients, staff and the environment, if necessary.
