Bob McCarty Writes

The chair of a national organization that educates the public and medical community about preventing infection shared some observations about the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome that are especially poignant in light of today’s fears about Swine Flu.

Betsy McCaughey

The SARS outbreak teaches that rigorous infection control in hospitals may be key to limiting deaths from swine flu in the U.S., warns Betsy McCaughey, Ph.D., in a news release today.  The founder and chair of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths (”RID”) added that much will depend on what hospitals do when the first seriously ill victims arrive.

“If hospitals have effective infection controls in place, the disease can be prevented from spreading to visitors, health care workers and their families,” McCaughey explained.  “Seventy-seven percent of the people who contracted SARS in the Canadian outbreak were patients, visitors or workers in hospitals. SARS was almost entirely a hospital infection epidemic.”

“The best defense against Swine Flu and other unknown pathogens is rigorous hospital hygiene and routine infection prevention. That is the lesson of SARS,” said McCaughey, noteworthy also for her experience as a former lieutenant governor of New York.