Animals & MRSA

Media Interviews - audio available

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Click the links below to here Jill Moss being interviewed about Pets and MRSA

radio clips (mp3)
Radio Five Live (1,226 KB)
Radio2 Jeremy Vine part 1 (4,262 KB)
Radio2 Jeremy Vine part 2 (538 KB)
LBC Nick Farrari part 1 (2,500 KB)
LBC Nick Farrari part 2 (308 KB)

The Radio 2 Interview

Transcript of Jill’s Interview with Jeremy Vine, October 19th, 2004

JV      Now, here’s a troubling story. Evidence is emerging that MRSA is able to claim the lives of pets after a woman lost her pet this summer. Jill Moss believes her pet, Bella, contracted the super-bug during surgery at a Medivet in London. Medivet is a chair of veterinary practices – a chain, I’m sorry, of veterinary practices. Bella had to be put down in August because of her illness, and Jill Moss joins us. This is believed to be the first recorded case of an animal dying because of MRSA in the UK.

JM That’s right

JV Good to meet you. What an awful thing to happen.

JM Yes it is, it’s absolutely awful and it’s been very difficult for me. I watched Bella suffer and I suffered too and it was an unnecessary death, it could have been avoided.

JV Tell us how you think it happened.

JM Well, she was chasing a squirrel, as dogs do, and she ruptured a Cruciate ligament, which is routine surgery. Now, she had surgery but didn’t recover very well. I had a lot of conflicting advice, most of the main vets were away on holiday I must say, and she just became worse and worse and in the end I was so unhappy with the way she was being treated that I removed her into specialist veterinary care. They performed immediate surgery, washed out the knee, found an infection, took cultures and determined MRSA. What they said to me was, if they had had her earlier it could have been contained in the wound, not spread through her body.

JV Which is what happened?

JM Yes.

JV And the result of that was what?

JM Well, the result was that they did do their best to get her recovered, and wanted to do reconstructive surgery, but – she was fighting, antibiotics would be given to her, it’s like a war going on in the body, The antibiotics keep losing the war and then she would win, and it would be an ongoing kind of treatment, really. But she did recover well enough to come home, unfortunately she deteriorated and this specialist centre is only a referral hospital and I had to take her back to the original vet who performed the surgery.

JV You’ve got a photo of her there…

JM I have, yes.

JV Let’s just have a look at it. This is a picture, a very nice black and white picture of you with Bella sitting at your knees, and she’s a Samoyed?

JM Samoyed, yes.

JV Which means…she’s largish? And you’re sitting on a park bench, and these were happier times?

JM Yes, very much.

JV And you’ve been devastated by this.

JM Absolutely devastated. So much so that I’ve launched a website, it’s not a scaremongering website, it’s informative, it offers owners advice, it talks about MRSA in people and animals, and hopefully it’s going to go some way towards making some changes so this doesn’t happen to any other animal or owner.

JV You can tell what the website is, if you like.

JM Thank you, Jeremy, it’s www.pets-mrsa.com

JV And you’re sure that this was MRSA and you’re sure that your dog caught it in the operation?

JM Absolutely. I have the bacteriological report from the specialist centre, and what they told me was that infections do occur post-surgery. Now a lot of experts that I’ve talked to have said it bad luck if a dog gets an infection, but it’s not bad luck if that infection is not recognised, not picked up on, and isn’t treated in time, let alone being contaminated in the first place, because MRSA – you and I, anybody in this studio, could be colonised – we wouldn’t know it, it’s only when you have surgery and perhaps transmitted from the nose during an anaesthetic into a wound, that the bacteria gets in, it’s sewn up, it likes dark, warm places, and it breeds. That’s how you become effectively infected with the bacteria.

JV And that wasn’t the end of the story because you were then infected by your dog, correct?

JM Well, now, I have to say this is very rare. The statistics do prove that it’s passed from human to animal, not from animals to human. But, if animals are exposed to people who are colonised then they become ill, or their immune system is suppressed they are more susceptible to getting the bacteria, which is what happened to Bella. I was nursing her without protective clothing, dealing with her extremities, and I had a cut in my hand and one in my foot, the bacteria got in. But it only got into me because I had an open wound and I was directly exposed to the bacteria. It’s really important to stress that people don’t abandon their animals for fear that they’re going to become infected with MRSA. That’s just not the case.

JV So when it got into you, what happened?

JM Well, I began to get a skin rash, and abscess on the hand and foot, only where I’d been in direct contact with the floor, really and with Bella and nursing her. And I’m on antibiotics, now. And a couple of them haven’t worked, but one seems to be working quite well.

JV Well Jill, thank you very much indeed for telling us about that, we have now got Arnold Levy, who is a senior partner at Medivet to give your version, Mr Levy.

AL Yes, hi there. Yes, this MRSA situation is quite a difficult situation. It’s not as clear-cut as Miss Moss has described. In Bella’s case there were many other factors which she hasn’t mentioned. One of the things she didn’t mention was that her dog was suffering from a benign tumour of the adrenal gland, which is an immuno-suppressant condition, and Bella’s immunity was very depressed, and even with a non-resistant infection, and with good antibiotics cases like that can spiral out of control.

JVB But it sounds as if you are conceding there that the MRSA was picked up by the dog during the operation which Medivet did.

AL Well, look, the infection had to start at some point at or after the operation. That is clear. The problem is how did the bug get into the wound? Now, was the bug on the dog before the wound was created? Or did the bug get onto the dog after the wound was created?  Miss Moss has an MRSA infection; it is entirely possible that Bella had been infected by Miss Moss handling her dog. It is a normal event, it’s not a reflection on Miss Moss, the bug passes from one organism to another. So when you cut through the skin these bugs can be in the hair follicle on the skin, they will, no matter how careful you clean the skin, or how sterile your theatre may be, a certain amount of bacteria will be carried into the wound by the surgical instrument.

JV Could you not have taken more care, though?

AL I don’t think we could have taken more care in the theatre, our theatre procedures are very tight, we also swab down our premises on a routine basis with very strong disinfectants, we also use steam cleaning so we are very careful about hygiene because there are many other bacteria which are – we view as even more dangerous than MRSA, in fact, Bella had another bug in the wound, called pseudomonas which we view as more aggressive than MRSA.

JV Yes, while you’ve been speaking Jill Moss has been angrily holding up a series of notes for me to read so it might be better if you actually spoke, Jill, instead of writing.

JM OK. What I’d like to say first of all is the infection I have is in my skin, I’m not colonised, there is no way that I could have colonised Bella, that is proved and I have experts backing me up on that. All animals, prior to surgery, should be swabbed. The Royal Veterinary College is now doing that. If MRSA is found colonised on the animal they are given extra antibiotics as a precaution prior to surgery. That is what should be done with all animals. And every single vet surgery should be actually looking for MRSA before they perform surgery, not after.

JV Mr Levy?

AL Yes. I do believe that the veterinary practice should be looking at MRSA. Let me say that this is an extremely rare condition in pets at the moment. That doesn’t mean it may not become more prevalent in the future. The research that has been done tends to suggest that dogs don’t carry the same type of Staphylococcus – which is what MRSA is – as the human population, but even so, I agree with Miss Moss that we ought to be cautious. Whether we ought to swab every single pet before surgery, that is obviously a risk and benefit situation which all our clients will have to decide upon.

JV Ok.

AL And it is an option that we could undertake.

JV Alright. David Bently……(e-mail response to the interview) 

LBC Radio Interview October 20th

LBC Radio Wednesday October 20th 2004 8.45am.  Nick Farrari Programme

NF:  Now we have talked many times about the problems of MRSA and the devastation that it has brought on families, the problems it creates on our hospital wards, it costs billions and the NHS still can’t combat it. More importantly than that it also costs thousands of lives, thousands of humans lives that is, up until now, when it has been proven that MRSA can transfer to domestic pets Jill Moss is founder of the website www.pets-mrsa.com don’t worry if you didn’t get it, I will give you the address again after we speak with Jill.  Jill, tell the listeners how you found out about MRSA transferring from humans to animals?

JM: My own dog Bella injured her leg and went into the vets for routine surgery. She didn’t recover and it was later discovered that she had MRSA bacteria inside the joint of her knee, which I believe she got during surgery.  By the time this was detected it had spread through her body and took her life.

NF: It was surgery on a cruciate ligament wasn’t it? She was chasing another animal or something?

JM: She was chasing a squirrel like dogs do everyday. She had to have this routine surgery and was contaminated with the bacteria. Once it gets into a wound it breeds through the body if it can’t be caught in time.  She died prematurely and I was confined in a room with her. The last few hours of her life was hell, with nurses refusing to treat her because she had this infection that they didn’t want to come into contact with.

NF: Hang on, so the same canine MRSA could become human MRSA?

JM: There are two strains; there is MRSI, which is very common in dogs and can be successfully treated with antibiotics, but Bella had the human strain which is MRSA.  I need to make this clear; the transmission comes from humans to animals and not the other way around.

NF: So it’s only one-way traffic? JM: It is at the moment.  The research shows that it is human colonisation taking the bacteria into veterinary practices.

NF: So why were the nurses so leery to attend to Bella?

JM: She was contaminated with MRSA. In her last few hours, she needed a lot of nursing, and their attitude was that they could not be exposed to it. One particular nurse told me that she had a child with a suppressed auto-immune system, and I was literally left alone confined in a room nursing Bella myself.

NF: Even though, there is no way that, at this time, humans can contract it from canines. That was the nurses reaction?

JM: Nick, it’s lack of knowledge.  That’s why my website is to inform and alert owners to the risks of MRSA in animals.  Not to panic; it’s not a question of animals bringing it to humans, but the risk is we, humans, taking it into veterinary premises.  The website is also there to educate vets and make them a little bit more aware of what can be done to prevent animals dying and suffering in the way that Bella did.

NF: what age was Bella?

JM: She was ten, but a fit bird for ten!

NF: So that we have a picture of Bella, what sort of dog was she?

JM: Beautiful white Samoyed. If you don’t know what that breed is – it is a white dog that comes from the Arctic Circle.  Looks like a polar bear.

NF: Oh, she must have been such a part of your life.

JM: Yes, she was.  I know that you have dogs Nick

NF: I do, unfortunately I lost a dog last year, I had a Spinoney, you probably haven’t heard of this, which is an Italian breed.  I also have a golden retriever who is eleven, he is absolutely part of the family life, and so I know how important they are.

JM: So when you take your dog out for a walk, and they chase a squirrel, you don’t expect them to die.

NF: So the dog contracted this through an instrument or something that occurred in the vet’s. What guidelines should there be. What should vets be doing?

JM: Oh, Nick, there are so many, and I won’t have time to go into detail on your programme. I suggest that people do visit the website to see more on this subject and get all the up-to-date information.  The most important thing to do if your animal is going in for surgery, any surgery, talk to the vet, ask them have they ever had a case of MRSA? Do they have infection control policies in place?, Do they employ barrier nursing techniques?  Look behind the doors, and on the floor – see how dirty or clean are the premises. That’s an important one. And, question the vet taking care of your animal. Don’t allow animals to be over-prescribed with antibiotics; this reduces their immune system. And make sure your vet is aware and up to date with infection control standards, because these are voluntary; they are not compulsory and each different vet can choose whether to adopt them or not, they really do need to become compulsory.

NF: I tell you what – Jill, out of your personal sadness clearly a campaign has emerged. Credit to you for doing all that you have done.  I am going to give that website address out again.   Jill Moss, thank you for your time and good luck with the website. Good luck and I hope that you recover from losing Bella. I know how key animals are to us.  Gosh, that website address and this is so important, once again is www.pets-mrsa.com.  I know that some of you listening right now, right now, will be taking your animals to vets at some point this week, you want to make a note of this website. (Repeat address). All of what Jill spoke about, the guidlines for vets are spelt out on www.pets-mrsa.com. I will do it again (repeat address again). Jill Moss is the founder, thanks for your time.