Guest Opinion | When Student Health fails its students

Mononucleosis, bronchitis, strep throat, the flu. These are just a few of the many ailments to which students and those living in a college environment have become accustomed.

The combination of living in close quarters with other students and having below average personal hygiene and diet leave Penn students and others at universities across the country susceptible to disease and infection.

In my case, it started out as bug bites. Friends swore to me they looked like spider bites, and the bigger they grew, the more convinced I became that because I hadn't developed the ability to climb buildings or shoot webs from my wrists I was dealing with a problem.

Finally, I made the trip down to Student Health Services to find that my "bites" were really infections in both of my arms. Samples were taken, and I was put on an antibiotic to clear up the infection. Student Health was very careful to tell me to keep my wounds covered and warned me to contact them if they got any worse.

Within a few days Student Health e-mailed me to tell me that I had contracted community MRSA, or a staph infection. For people whose weeknights don't include Gray's Anatomy or ER, staph infections are most commonly found in hospitals. They are skin infections that can be dangerous if not treated properly.

I was told by the doctors on my visit to Student Health that the members of the football team had contracted the infection and that there had been other cases around campus. They told me to direct anyone who seemed to have the symptoms to them for treatment.

Within a week of contracting the infection, two of my roommates visited Student Health to find that they had skin infections similar to mine. Since it seemed to be my fault that my roommates were now dealing with the infection, I was sure that I had spread the disease, and Student Health and the University were going to make an announcement to the community

That never happened.

The spread of MRSA infection is not an embarrassing problem, and it's becoming more and more prevalent in universities, cities and other communities outside of hospitals.

By not alerting the community, Student Health and the University are attempting to avoid creating an atmosphere of fear on campus because of this infection, but sometimes a little information can do more to help than to inject fear.

If there is an infection that has affected more than a handful of friends or athletes in the University community, a little information and disclosure is not a bad thing, and the University should let students know both how to prevent getting sick and how to identify the disease in question.

If my roommates or I had ignored the infection, trying to pass it off as bug bites for much longer than we did, we may have ended up in the hospital for days - and possibly weeks if it had spread to our bones.

I can't imagine my roommate, a Wharton senior in the throws of on-campus recruiting and an intense job search, would welcome a week-long break. He told me the only reason he had gone to Student Health promptly was because he knew of my infection.

An announcement by Student Health would go a long way toward prevent students from passing off bumps as bug bites and identifying infections for what they are.

The University of Georgia's University Health Center lists information on MRSA directly on their Web site, and gives a list of ways to prevent the infection, including washing hands thoroughly using soap and water and avoiding of sharing personal items such as towels and razors.

Like many others on campus, I live in an average college student apartment: It's not too clean but not too dirty. The bathroom isn't always spotless, and there are occasionally piles of dishes in the sink. While these are conditions that my roommates and I are comfortable with, it's a condition that is ripe for the spreading of disease and infection.

While my infection has cleared up, and my roommates are well on their way to recovery, I will now be taking some careful precautions and be mindful of the atmosphere in which I live.

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