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Monday 17 December 2012

MRSA st398 in People in England.


Some days the writer wonders to himself, "am I overstating the case?"

Then we run across something that simply astonishes by the sheer unabashed effrontery and seriousness.

This was good example. It's a British government site here

Despite the problems, the last meeting was cancelled meaning there has been no meeting since Feb 1 2012.

Those meaningless minutes, cover mostly discussing a pet charity and its website revamp.

Anywhere outside Defra, the massive British agricultural ministry, one meeting, one set of minutes like this and the bulk of the members would publicly refuse to get involved in an obvious farce.

We are especially concerned about this entry from the last meeting February last. 

If anyone gave us, as a Committee Member, “some background” and comments from “a member” details and name was not minuted, the writer would be proposing a motion of no confidence in the Chair and refusing to authorise the minutes. 

If the motion failed we would resign and call the media.

In our time, we sat on many similar government sponsored committees, actually chairing hundreds of meetings, including senior civil servants as members.

Some of the material was confidential and raised security implications, but the minutes were still intelligible and informative, making an accurate record of what was discussed. We did not produce minutes padded with trivia.

This is quite disgraceful. Where is the transparency promised? No wonder the country is riddled with animal and zoonotic disease, with the people of Britain kept in ignorance.

These confirm that there is another obvious cover-up on realised public health risks from "pig" MRSA in Northern England under way over the past year and more.

It is now only a matter of time before a major external investigation is launched into this disgraceful scandal.

Full Minutes of this meeting here

Defra Antimicrobial Resistance Co-ordination (DARC) Group  
MRSA Sub-Group 15
the Meeting  

Report of meeting held on 1 February 2012 



...“7. Human Cases of MRSA ST398 under investigation in Northern England

7.1 Members were provided with some background to this agenda item. 

7.2 A member commented that in relation to this agenda item there was nothing
of particular issue in terms of public  health. However, it would be useful to
have nationally agreed communication lines as well as local ones. A member
queried if there would be any issues if they passed information on these cases
to ARHAI and were informed that there shouldn’t be any issues, however they
would be provided with a few summary lines that they could use at the ARHAI
meeting.

7.3 Regarding these cases, the source of the MRSA was still being explored.     
   
7.4 It was considered that currently without the additional information there was
nothing further for this group to comment on under this item at the moment. “