Although a student on campus has contracted a staph infection, Ball State University students and staff should not be alarmed, Kent Bullis, a physician at Ball State's Amelia T. Wood Student Health Center, said.
Katie Coleman, a junior accounting and risk management and insurance major who was diagnosed with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) two weeks ago, said her infection was not contagious because the wound has healed.
"I am not contagious to anybody," she said. "That's like me being diagnosed with AIDS and people being a afraid of me. I am completely healed, and I had my last doctor's appointment on Friday."
Coleman said doctors cleared her to travel after being diagnosed and that her infection has been treated.
"They gave me a soap they use in surgical prep and my roommates are fine," she said. "They cleaned the wound [and] I had two shots of antibiotic."
Coleman said the wound appeared to be a cist that had developed from an ingrown hair follicle.
"If you get a pimple from your waste down you should get it looked at," she said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site, MRSA is a bacteria that causes staph infections.
These bacteria are resistant to common antibiotics.
Coleman said the bacteria, which is frequently found on skin, was resistant to common antibiotics.
"It's not resistant to any drug," she said. "It's resistant to penicillin."
Bullis said according to a study done a year ago, the bacteria is present on one-third of all Muncie residents' skin.
"I think people don't have an appreciation of how common the bacteria is," he said.
The CDC study said in the next couple of years more people will die of MRSA than AIDS, Bullis said, so people do not need to feel as uneasy about the staph bacteria.
"Right now there are not a huge number of people dying with HIV," he said. "HIV is a very scary disease but it's not all that great a number. To make such a big deal out of MRSA infections seems to me unnecessary."
Some strains of the bacteria are deadly, he said, but most are not as dangerous.
"The vast majority of people who have this don't die from it," he said.
Staph being on our skin is not necessarily detrimental to the general health, he said.
"Without staph it would be likely that our skin would be colonized by a more aggressive bacteria," he said.
Almost everyday the Health Center will see people carrying the bacteria, Bullis said, and many days the doctors confirm cases of MRSA.
Bullis said people who carry the bacteria on their skin can spread it, but it would not infect others. When there is a break in the skin that is not properly cleaned and bandaged, it could result in an infection, he said.
Bullis said the main way to defend against the disease is to take care of your immune system by sleeping enough and eating nutritious foods.
One way to avoid infection is to avoid unnecessary antibiotic use because this might make people more resistant to the drugs, but when treating MRSA, antibiotics are used along with other treatments such as surgery to fight the disease, he said.
Coleman said that she was diagnosed two weeks ago and was glad she learned about her illness from doctors and not from the media.
"None of the doctors were freaking out or saying this was the epidemic," she said. "The doctors seemed so nonchalant about it."
The disease is deadly if patients are not aware of their bodies and do not visit doctors early, she said.
"It's not as bad as it sounds if you catch it early," she said. "It's [about] being cautious and aware of your own body. If something is oozing from your leg, you should probably go to the doctor."
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