TORONTO—Antibiotic resistant Staph bacteria cost an estimated 2,300 Canadians their lives in 2006 and added a whopping $200 million-$250 million to the country’s health-care bill, figures extrapolated from newly-released national detection rates suggest.
They also suggest Canadian hospitals saw 29,000 new patients carrying methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria in 2006, of whom 11,700 had new MRSA infections (he remainder would have been carrying the bacteria on their skin or in their nostrils).