News Daily
News Daily：
10 pct chance of catching disease in China hospitals: state media
Patients at Chinese hospitals have a one in 10 chance of being infected with a new disease in addition to whatever they came in to be treated for, a state newspaper reported Wednesday.
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The nearly five million people who get a new sickness at hospitals adds a cost of 10 billion yuan (1.35 billion US dollars) to the health care system, the China Daily said, citing senior medical experts.
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The most prevalent infection at Chinese hospitals is MRSA -- or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- a bacterium which health officials said causes half of the total infections.
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Though most MRSA bugs are not serious, some can be life-threatening because its ability to mutate makes it difficult to treat.
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MRSA has been linked to the deaths of 18,650 people in the United States in 2005 and the number of deaths is rising.
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The figure was not available for China.
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China's vice health minister Huang Jiefu urged hospital workers to better follow hygiene standards, underscoring that most infections were largely avoidable if standards are enforced and bad practices eliminated. — AFP
