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if(requestedWidth > 0){ document.getElementById(‘articleViewerGroup’).style.width = requestedWidth + “px”; document.getElementById(‘articleViewerGroup’).style.margin = “0px 0px 10px 10px”; } HARTFORD — Patient advocates and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on Wednesday called for better monitoring to reduce rates of the deadly staph infection MRSA in state hospitals.In response, the Connecticut Hospital Association on Wednesday announced a series of attempts to prevent and control such infections, including a “pledge” that state hospitals will use to control methacillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus.

“There should be screening for MRSA whenever anybody at risk enters a hospital,” Blumenthal said, adding that “simple, common-sense” measures, such as more hand washing, can literally save lives.

“Thousands of people in Connecticut and 100,000 across the country die every year because of this disease,” he said. “It is totally and completely preventable.”

The legislation supported by Blumenthal and the nonprofit Connecticut Center for Patient Safety would require hospitals to screen cancer patients and those admitted to their intensive care units.

“Hospitals must be made safer,” he said. “I was struck in preparing this legislation that an enormous number of people become sick — from diseases that they did not go to the hospital to treat — while they were in the hospital.”

The legislation would also require annual reports to the Department of Public Health, detailing the number of patients who contracted MRSA infections.…. Read the rest of the story