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Living conditions in disadvantaged communities could be helping drug-resistant golden staph to spread outside hospitals. It didn't take long after the invention of penicillin for the first strains of resistant golden staph to appear, and force researchers to find new antibiotics to combat the resistance. One of these was called methicillin, and after a while methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus – MRSA – started to appear in hospitals, causing havoc. But these days, most MRSA is turning up outside hospitals and the question is whether they've escaped from the local infirmary, or evolved through the use of antibiotics by GPs, or what? A study in Darwin which looked at the genetic fingerprint of MRSA has noted that community MRSA in Australia is different depending on where you live. The researchers linked the MRSA back to extremely high rates of infection with exactly the same organisms in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The researchers believe that the appalling living conditions in those communities allows the resistance gene to jump easily, helped along by antibiotic use. And the MRSA then turns up in the non-Indigenous community. It's not a reason for fear and loathing. It's yet another reason – even if it's for selfish motives – to ensure we invest in better housing, education, nutrition and sanitation for Indigenous Australians living in remote communities.
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