08:35 PM PST on Wednesday, December 21, 2005

By LINDA BYRON / KING 5 News

[Editors Note: What follows is text from our orginal story, which aired Nov. 7.  Since we started our investigation, some Seattle and King County Council members have asked the Health Department for a plan of action to manage MRSA in the jail. A special MRSA work group is reviewing existing procedures to see what more can be done to control the organism.]

Working in a jail can be dangerous. But no worker expects to catch a serious disease and pass it on to family members.

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Guards in King County's jails say that's exactly what's happening with a superbug called MRSA.

King County and other jails across the country have a serious problem with MRSA.

It's very contagious and tough to treat.

Two years ago, there was a MRSA outbreak in the King County jails.

But our investigation found those jails still not following the tougher rules that have controlled outbreaks in other jails.

Inside the county jails in Kent and downtown Seattle, thousands of inmates share cells, showers and sometimes a dangerous staph infection called MRSA.

"People have died from it yes," said Dr. Thomas Hooten, an infectious disease specialist with Harborview Medical Center.

MRSA can be as mild as a pimple and as extreme as a blood infection. The organism is resistant to common antibiotics and highly contagious.

"[It’s] very tough to stop the spread. It's so easily spread, MRSA's very transmissible,” said Hooten.

Especially in crowded jails.

So it's not surprising King County inmates are getting it and passing it around. But guards say they're getting it too and, even worse, passing it on to their families.

One female guard, who didn’t want to be identified, told the KING 5 Investigators that she became infected while working at the King County Correctional Facility in downtown Seattle.

She said that before she knew it, she'd given a MRSA infection to her teenage niece.

And a group of King County corrections officers we talked to said their biggest fear on the job wasn’t a violent inmate, it was contracting MRSA.

"I'm very worried, it's clear people have been infected, taken it home, it's a very real threat every day," said one guard, Officer Fernandez. The guards asked that only their last names be used to protect them from possible retaliation by inmates once they are released.

"It's been difficult, very difficult,” Fernandez said.

One guard we talked with, Officer Smith, said she had contracted MRSA four times and believes that each time he got it from an inmate.

Smith missed more than a year of work. She said doctors told her husband, who suffers from MS to move out until her wounds were healed.

So how bad is the problem? And is enough being done to stop it in the jail?

The KING 5 Investigators reviewed nearly 2,000 pages of memos, e-mails and reports going back two and half years.

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King County and other jails across the country have a serious problem with MRSA.

They show MRSA has been a growing concern since an outbreak in 2002 and 2003. Yet the jail and Seattle-King County Department of Health were slow to implement clear measures to control it.

One jail supervisor outlined his concern in a July 2003 memo.

"I am extremely concerned about our lack of policies and procedures" wrote the supervisor. Nearly a year later, a jail health doctor warned she was "concerned by the lack of consistency in our management of MRSA."

The Health Department has documented 369 cases, but admits there are many more.

But unlike many other jails around the country, they don't track the numbers on a regular basis.

“We have at this point other priorities because it's not a critical issue at this point. We are implementing electronic medical records, which we will be able track going forward,” said Bill Danforth, an infection control nurse who works on the front lines at the jail.

Danforth said because MRSA is spread by touching skin or a contaminated surface, the Health Department believes it can be controlled.

“The answer is not high tech at all. If you follow what your mom told you as a child, ‘wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands,’ your chances of getting MRSA in the jail are slim to none.

But the Federal Bureau of Prisons recommends more than just frequent hand washing. Their guidelines include daily sanitation of cells occupied by infected inmates, daily showers, new towels every day, new linens every other day.

We asked jail director Reed Holtgeerts why he doesn't adhere to the federal guidelines.

“It is a budget issue, staffing issue. And handling the laundry … We have linen exchange once a week, we believe it's handling the problem," he said.

Jail guards we talked to aren’t yet convinced.

Out of a group of 12 we met with, all believed that lapses in protocol were putting them at risk, frequently.

We found the jail falling short in some key areas: There's not enough soap and documents show cleaning solutions have been mislabeled. Guards said they see clean laundry delivered in the same bins used to transport the dirty laundry and that inmates aren't properly disposing of bandages.

"Most often they're falling off, we find them in chairs, the shower, cells," said jail Officer Bentley.

The American Civil Liberties Union recently toured the jail and expressed concern about things like torn mattresses that can harbor infectious bacteria.

And they say they were given conflicting accounts about how frequently common areas are being sanitized.

"We didn't think that the cleaning protocols which need to be followed very carefully were being followed," said Washington ACLU spokesman Doug Honig.

The areas we toured with the director appeared clean.

There were signs telling inmates in the kitchen to notify guards if they have infected cuts or sores.

But we saw those same cracked mattresses that worried the ACLU and we weren't allowed to photograph the floors where inmates share large cells and dayrooms.

We asked Director Reed Holgeerts if he thought the situation in the jail was acceptable.

“It's acceptable but it can be improved on,” Holgeerts said.

It could be costly if MRSA isn't controlled in the jail.

Inmates are filing damage claims asking for anywhere from $30,000 to millions.

So far, seven corrections officers have filed workers comp claims saying workplace exposure made them sick.

All together, they've missed 530 days of work and they worry about the future.

"I'm scared ... I'm scared to bring this home to my husband, people are dying from this. It's frightening," said Officer Smith.

No one has died from MRSA in the King County jail, but it has happened in other parts of the country.

MRSA is blamed for the death of two inmates in Michigan and three in Pennsylvania earlier this year.

The jail feels it has good protocols in place, but the director said they've just formed a MRSA committee to see what more should be done, and they really need the numbers to know how well it's working.

The last numbers they tracked were in 2004, and that was only in one jail.

They expect to start doing it regularly when they get an electronic medical record system up and running.