Stars and Stripes, in an article that appeared in the Europe edition on Oct. 31, reported that a student at a Department of Defense elementary school that serves the Kaiserslautern, Germany, military community had been treated for an antibiotic-resistant staph infection — a so-called “superbug” that has drawn a lot of publicity in the United States. A reader sent a letter to the editor criticizing Stripes for running the story. That illuminated a challenge faced every so often by the media: Do they alert citizens to possible dangers in the community, even if this causes disquiet, and brings objections from authorities?

In this article, reporter Steve Mraz noted that the student, a girl, had returned to Vogelweh Elementary School and posed no threat to other students. He also quoted the mother of another student as saying authorities should have notified parents that someone had contracted the contagious illness. “That’s something all of us — I would think — should be notified of,” the mother, Faith Jacobson, told Mraz.

The letter writer, Nancy Peck from Ramstein Air Base, charged that Stripes had “moved from reporting the news to creating the news.” She accused the paper of “gossip-mongering and innuendos.” Peck argued that the article was unnecessary because everyone had acted responsibly — the girl’s parents, the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center doctors who treated the child, and the Department of Defense Dependents Schools officials who followed guidelines in deciding it was not necessary to alert the community.

In fact, the article quoted DODDS-Europe officials as saying they followed the advice of professionals at Landstuhl who said notification of the public was not needed. Landstuhl’s chief of preventive medicine, Col. (Dr.) William Corr, told the reporter, “With a single case, it was appropriately treated, and the level of concern was minimal. … The disease is preventable and is treatable.” Officials at Landstuhl said they adhered to guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention in Atlanta.

A staffer at the CDC sent me the pertinent guideline, which said: “Usually, it should not be necessary to inform the entire school community about a single MRSA (the acronym by which the staph illness is known) infection. When a MRSA infection occurs within the school population, the school nurse and school physician should determine, based on their medical judgment, whether some or all students, parents and staffs should be notified. Consultation with the local public health authorities should be used to guide this decision.”

In other words, the school nurse and school physician and not medical or school authorities should decide whether the public should be notified. Vogelweh Elementary has no specific physician and the nurse, Sandy Redford, referred me to the school district when I called. There, Matt Syarto, the chief of staff of the Kaiserslautern superintendent’s office, told me that in instances like this “we always refer to the nearest medical facility, in this case Landstuhl.” And he said the nurse was the one to make the call to the Landstuhl officials. So the letter writer was correct: The procedures were followed more or less to the letter.

Nevertheless, in my mind it is hard to argue that the public good was not served by telling the community of this case of a notorious infection in its midst. I think the paper did the right thing reporting the story. (Though the large front-page headline added an unnecessary sense of alarm.) The article pointed out that the “superbug” had raised broad concern in the States because it had resulted in a few deaths among students. A finding by the CDC itself that the staph infection was killing more people than AIDS was widely reported in the U.S. media, including on the network news shows.

A short time before the Kaiserslautern case came to light, Stripes had published news service stories about the illness. A lengthy Los Angeles Times story that appeared a fortnight prior was titled: “Research: Staph infections pose serious risk in America.”

On Oct. 30, one day before Mraz’s story appeared, there was an American Roundup item in the paper. It said an eastern Kentucky school district with one confirmed case of the infection announced it would shut down all 23 of its schools. It planned on “disinfecting classrooms, restrooms, cafeterias, locker rooms, buses and even external areas such as playgrounds and sports fields.” All for one case of the infection.

As a final touch to the Stripes article, Mraz added a definition of the MRSA infection from the Mayo Clinic, and advice from the chief of public health nursing at Landstuhl on ways to avoid the sickness. It’s worth repeating: “Washing your hands, covering wounds with Band-Aids or clothing and maintaining a clean environment …”