Medicine: Staph of Death (Cont'd.)

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No sooner had the A.M.A. issued the ominous warning than its timeliness was grimly proved. Warning: there is growing danger of in-hospital epidemics caused by Staphylococcus aureus, a common germ some of whose strains are resistant to most antibiotics (TIME, March 24). Proof: the belatedly disclosed deaths since Dec. 1 of 16 babies in Houston's Jefferson Davis Hospital (run by the city and Harris County). So far this year, 81 babies were infected; in February alone, 21 mothers also caught the infection.

Root of the trouble in Houston was painfully clear. The wealthy city has had $12 million moldering for almost ten years because politicians and doctors could not agree on where and how to build a new hospital. Meanwhile, Jefferson Davis has been crowded to the rafters, running 15,000 patients a year through its 361 beds and 3,800 babies in and out of its 75 bassinets. When its 41 maternity beds were full, mothers were crowded in the halls. Into rooms for four beds, six were squeezed. As many as four patients were simultaneously examined in tiny rooms with only screens for privacy. Ancient, ill-designed and inadequate ventilating systems helped to spread germs.

Disease detectives from the U.S. Communicable Disease Center have tried to find who is carrying the infection and how it spreads. Besides the newborn, the old and enfeebled are especially subject to "staph" infections; many pneumonia deaths are suspected (though not yet proved) to have been caused by staph. To fight the guilty strains of germs-which are resistant to most widely used antibiotics-doctors are trying two new antibiotics not yet released for general use, vancomycin and one developed in Japan called kanamycin.

A token cut (to 35) has been made in the number of maternity beds to reduce overcrowding. Three rooms are being readied to replace the lethal nursery. But officials admit that these measures may prove useless: the whole maternity service may have to be moved to a new, clean, staph-free location.