by William J. Beerman, Sr.
I recently had an opportunity to present gubernatorial candidate and New Mexico Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-Albuquerque) with an information packet about an anti-superbug campaign being waged by the Peggy Lillis Foundation (PLF). Rep. Lujan Grisham responded that she would “take a personal interest” in the matter.
Rep. Lujan Grisham expressed concern about superbug Clostridium Difficile (C. Diff) and other healthcare-associated infections (HAI) during a brief meeting with me in Las Cruces, NM, where she took part in a public forum for New Mexico Democratic gubernatorial candidates on May 1.
The PLF is named for Peggy Lillis, a teacher and mother who died from C. Diff in 2010 at age 56.
A former cabinet-level state health official, Rep. Lujan Grisham said she is familiar with the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as C. Diff and other healthcare-associated infections.
“I am a care-giver myself,” she commented. She co-founded the bipartisan Assisting Caregivers Today (ACT) Caucus in Congress. Her experience with caregiving for her mother was outlined in a November 2017 article published on Forbes.com.
Once went undercover in a nursing home
Formerly the New Mexico Secretary of Health and the Director of the New Mexico Agency on Aging, Lujan Grisham went undercover in a nursing home in 1997, posing as a stroke victim, to investigate conditions there. A 2016 campaign ad about her 3 days undercover in the nursing home, where she saw abuse and she herself was neglected, is archived on You Tube.
The information packet I presented to Rep. Lujan Grisham contained information about Senate Bill 2469, which was introduced by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) on February 28. Brown’s bill, named the STAAR Act (Strategies to Address Antibiotic Resistance), calls for various actions to address the growing crisis in which an estimated 2 million people get sick each year with antibiotic-resistant infections.
Besides the human suffering, antibiotic resistance takes a toll on the U.S. economy estimated at $20 billion a year in excess healthcare costs and as much as $35 billion in lost productivity.
Another New Mexico member of Congress, Ben Ray Lujan (D-Santa Fe), sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health. He helped develop the 21st Century Cures Act, which overwhelmingly passed Congress and was enacted in December 2016. The law allocates $4.8 billion in funding to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for cutting-edge scientific research on treatments and cures. The STAAR Act would complement the 21st Century Cures Act by improving the existing surveillance, data collection, and research work to prevent bacteria from developing resistance to current and future antibiotics.
PLF is concerned that many cases of C. Diff go unreported, and the organization wants to make reporting of C. Diff mandatory, including on death certificates.
The STAAR Act facilitates national Center for Disease Control partnership with state health departments through CDC’s Prevention Epicenters Program. Lujan Grisham said her interest will continue if she is elected governor and she foresees roles in fighting HAIs for government agencies and institutions in New Mexico.
PLF points out that C. Diff is the most common cause of infectious diarrhea in healthcare settings. It caused nearly 500,000 infections in one year, and 29,000 deaths. Seventeen percent of C. Diff cases occur in nursing homes and 22 percent in hospitals. Only 7 percent are completely unrelated to health care. In nursing homes, the infection interferes with residents’ rehabilitation therapy and recovery as it causes uncontrollable diarrhea, fever, nausea, abdominal cramping, dehydration, loss of appetite, and death in some cases. Ninety percent of Americans who die from a C. Diff infection are 65 or older.
More information is available in blog posts on my website about nursing homes, https://wbeerman.com and at the following PLF websites: