Several school districts in Long Island have reported cases of MRSA, and a 12-year-old Brooklyn boy died two weeks ago from the infection.

MRSA is short for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, an extremely dangerous disease that knows no color, sex or race. Federal health officials emphasize the need for every state to focus on teaching prevention and intervention, starting with prominently displaying MRSA symptoms and prevention methods in all facilities where people can come in close contact with the disease and requiring all health care providers to keep information updated.

Dr. John Jernigan, an expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on MRSA, said that clusters of antibiotic-resistant staph infections in the community “go away when those involved implement simple hygiene measures.”

He also said that shutting down schools is not the best idea for preventing children from becoming contaminated with MRSA. He also underlined the need for school authorities to make sure students know they need to clean their hands, cover any sores or wounds with a clean dressing and avoid sharing personal products like towels or razors.

The reason for that is, as Dr. John Jernigan said, that staph infections, including MRSA, are “primarily spread by skin-to-skin contact and the role of the contaminated environment is not that important.”

Although the good-hygiene message is old and irrefutable, plenty of evidence suggests that people ignore it. A 2005 study found that while 91 percent of Americans say they always wash their hands after using a public rest room, only 83 percent actually did. Men were worse than women: 90 percent of women washed their hands while 75 percent of men did.

The CDC studies agree that MRSA is more prevalent and potentially more serious when acquired in a hospital than when contracted outside, in the community. That is because people in a hospital are sicker.

“It is almost always the case that the errant health care worker is either completely absorbed in the task at hand, or simply is unaware of the potential impact of the consequence of noncompliance,” said Dr. Susan Donelan, medical director of the healthcare epidemiology department at Stony Brook University Medical Center.

Joseph Conte, head of quality management at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, said patients should ask their doctors about a hospital's infection rate for a particular procedure. “If they cannot give the answer, it's not good,” he said. “You want to be in a place where people are cognizant. It's everybody job.”

About eight months ago, they began placing bottles of alcohol hand sanitizers and signs in 17 languages reminding people to clean their hands all over the system’s 15 hospitals. The system's 40,000 computers have a screen saver with the same message, Conte said. The reminders seem to be working. When the bottles were first put out, they would last for a month, Conte said. “Now,” he said, “they're gone within a couple of days.”