Thursday, 4:30 PM
Dangerous infection strikes pupil, triggers cleanup
By Calvin Hennick and Marc Robins, Globe Correspondents
A cleaning crew worked to sanitize a Wrentham elementary school Thursday night after a second-grade girl was diagnosed with an antibiotic-resistant staph infection, but Superintendent Jeffrey Marsden said other children are not at risk.
"There's no issue with kids" contracting the disease, Mardsen told the Globe, because the infection is most commonly spread through skin-to-skin contact. In a letter to parents sent home with pupils from the Delaney School Thursday, Marsden said "there is absolutely no evidence that the student contracted the disease at school."
The child is suffering from Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, which has erupted recently onto the national health radar, with officials saying it is much more common than previously thought.
It caused more than 94,000life-threatening infections and nearly 19,000 deaths in the United States in 2005, according to a study published in the Oct. 17 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. A Virginia high school student died earlier this week from the disease, and a 4-year-old New Hampshire girl died earlier this month. Recent cases have been reported in Connecticut, Maryland, and Ohio.
Marsden said he learned about the Wrentham girl’s diagnosis Thursday, but he was not sure when or how the ailment had been detected. He had spoken with the pupil’s mother, and "the report was that she was doing very well" at home. She has not been hospitalized, he said.
"The mom was shaken up, was scared, but was positive about how her child was responding," he said. "From what I understand, it’s not the same strain of MRSA that’s causing some of these serious issues. We’re told it’s not the most dangerous, but still serious for a kid, no doubt about it."
Marsden said that he did not know when the student would return to school, but that classes would go on as usual on Friday.
