Prevention and Management of CAMRSA Infections in Athletes

A single athlete who is infected by CMRSA can serve as a source for infecting the rest of the team. For that reason, it is very important for coaches and trainers to have a very clear idea about different types of skin infections as soon as they appear and at the same time it is also important to evaluate every athlete at the very first symptom of any sort of skin infection.

It is necessary for every team to possess an official for evaluating every type of skin infections and at the same time maintaining a specific record of all the skin infections. Every athlete member should inform any sort of skin infection like a pimple or red bump to the official and it is only the official who can take decisions regarding the presence of such an athlete in the team.

Hygiene

The one and the most important prevention behavior that should be adopted in order to prevent CAMRSA from spreading is washing the hands properly. This should be emphasized on by athletes. The hands of the athletes must be very clean before they try to touch their mouth; eyes, nose or any sort of scrapes or cuts on their skin. An alcohol based hand sanitizer should also be used and if the hands are too dirty then they should be washed by water and soap. Warm water should be used for washing the hands and even the wrists. Athletes and even general people should always wash their hands after touching, blowing and sneezing their nose, after making use of the toilet and before and after games, practice sessions, work outs and after coming in contact with people and surfaces. Apart from that, it is also important to have a shower of water and soap after sports that require direct contact and a dry and clean towel should also be used. Towels should never be shared apart from the other personal care things like soap and razors.

Laundry linens

While handling dirty clothing or laundry, people should be careful to keep the body away from the clothing so that their clothing does not gets contaminated. It is always very important to rinse or prewash items that are

found to be grossly contaminated by body fluids. Hot water should be used for washing uniforms, towels, scrimmage shirts and various other laundry. Linens as well as clothing that can bear bleaching should be bleached. Mechanical dryer should be used for drying linens and uniforms and towels should be distributed only if they are completely dry.

Athletic Equipment

Athletes should always use clothing or towel in the form of a barrier between shared surfaces of sports equipments and the bare skin. In addition to all these, it is also extremely important to disinfect touched areas on sports equipments that are shared and athletic areas daily by the use commercial Environment Protection Agency-registered detergent disinfectant.