Norway has controlled Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) with a few simple measures:
- Norwegian doctors prescribe fewer antibiotics than any other country, so people do not have a chance to develop resistance to them.
- Patients with MRSA are isolated and medical staff who test positive stay at home.
- Doctors track each case of MRSA by its individual strain, interviewing patients about where they’ve been and who they’ve been with, testing anyone who has been in contact with them.
- Convenience stores in downtown Oslo are stocked with an amazing and colorful array — 42 different brands at one downtown 7-Eleven — of soothing, but non-medicated, lozenges, sprays and tablets. All workers are paid on days they, or their children, stay home sick. And drug makers aren’t allowed to advertise, reducing patient demands for prescription drugs.
Their stats look good:
In Norway, MRSA has accounted for less than 1 percent of staph infections for years. That compares to 80 percent in Japan, the world leader in MRSA; 44 percent in Israel; and 38 percent in Greece.In the U.S., cases have soared and MRSA cost $6 billion last year. Rates have gone up from 2 percent in 1974 to 63 percent in 2004. And in the United Kingdom, they rose from about 2 percent in the early 1990s to about 45 percent, although an aggressive control program is now starting to work.