Help us
help others

The charity relies on your support to survive. Help us help people and animals suffering with resistant infections by making a donation.

It is simple to donate.....

One off donations or monthly direct debit donations can be made

BMF case now owner and cat are doing well

If two individuals are healthy, MRSA can spread from one to the other without either noticing – it is in people and animals that have wounds or some form of immune system problem that such transmission is more likely to cause infection. As it lives on the skin, in the airways and in the environment, MRSA can be spread by skin-to-skin contact (e.g. shaking hands; contact sports) or from indirect contact (e.g. sharing exercise equipment; coughs and sneezes). It can be spread from one environment to another by being carried on people or animals (e.g. a person can take a strain of MRSA from their home with them to a hospital).

MRSA may move in this way from:

1. a person to their environment
2. the environment to another person,
3. from one person to another person
4. from a person to an animal
5. from an animal to a person
6. from a person to an animal
7. from an animal to their environment
8. from the environment to an animal

It is worth noting that MRSA is less commonly found on companion animals than on people – it is much more common for an animal to get MRSA from their owner than the other way around.

Pets may therefore get MRSA from contact with their owners or other humans (such as owners or veterinary staff). As with humans, pets have immune systems and are at highest risk of actual MRSA infection (as opposed to carriage or colonization) when their immune system is compromised or if they have wounds (e.g. surgical incisions).

Hospitals always present a higher risk of infection. This is because they are closed environments (so people come into close contact with each other); there are lots of patients and staff coming in through the doors (who can therefore bring MRSA in); and there are large numbers of ill patients whose immune systems may not be working as well as normal (who can therefore get infections), as well as large numbers of surgical cases with big wounds.

For this reason we must all be particularly careful to practice good hygiene in hospitals!