HealthCare Systems

When we go to our local hospital the last consideration any one of us wants to have to think about is what to do to protect ourselves from the hospital. But that is just what we should be thinking of now that MRSA and other staph infections kill close to a thousand people a year at hospitals across the country.

Due to a rise in antibiotic use prescribed for any and all reasons including simple cold viruses and flu viruses, many opportunistic infections have found a way to mutate and do not oftentimes respond to the typical treatment with antibiotics. Hospitals have become breeding grounds for these infections and the average physician seems to be caught off guard when it comes to treating them. It is evident that the average hospital staff has not put into practice the necessary hygiene practices required to protect its facilities and patients against them. It is going to take a massive overhaul approach by hospitals in this country if we are to eradicate these frightening infections both in the way they clean and the way they treat bacterial disease.

There are alternative ways of treating bacterial infections. Libraries and bookstores have information out there about not only the use of herbal remedies, but about such practices as the use of bacterial phages, something researched prior to the discovery of antibiotics. Those in the medical profession and Pharmaceutical industry would do their patients a service to study these therapies and thoroughly investigate their safety as we are in a crisis when it comes to hospital safety and need to find a way out.

A person doesn’t have to look very far to find someone who has lost a parent or grandparent or other relative not due to the illness they were initially admitted for, but due to a lost battle with a staph infection their bodies in their weakened state fell prey to. Some have become blind when equipment wasn’t cleaned properly using an autoclave or during a so-called outpatient procedure; a routine cataract operation. Others have come down with pneumonia and MRSA after being admitted with such complications as a seizure. Still others have acquired bowel infections; some of them turning out to be fatal and others have come down with herpes after receiving a colonoscopy.

Hospitals should not have to be institutions the general public fears and dreads and avoids, not only for the enormous astronomical bill they will receive, but also for the real possibility that they might not get out alive. They instead should be places where those admitted can rest assured that those hospital overseers will do everything possible to treat them and provide the best innovative science and medical technology has to offer in one of the cleanest environments on earth.

Our medical system has become nothing but a business and in many respects a dishonest one at that. It is high time it returned to being a relationship between a patient and their doctor; a hospital being a place of refuge and healing where people are cared for. If careful measures are taken and conscientious people intervene, it can hopefully become just that.