SAN DIEGO -- A bacterial epidemic at San Diego-area prisons is now is out in the community, and it is spreading quickly.

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How To Protect Yourself From Infection

How did it escape? The answer lies in the overuse of antibiotics.

Janine and Ron Borg are in the grips of a resistant staph infection, one they have passed back and forth and on to other family members.

"It started off with just a little pimple, and then within days, it would grow to a boil size," Janine Borg said.

Late last spring, Ron developed several skin boils on his body. His doctor blamed them on spider bites.

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SAMPLE CASES Staph Infections

"He was told that he had a spider bite. He got medication and several weeks later, I got one -- 'a spider bite' -- and I thought, 'That's really unusual,'" Janine Borg said.

"The problem is not the spiders, but that we are spreading the organism from one site to another," said Dr. Gonzalo Ballon-Landa, an infectious disease expert at Scripps Health in San Diego.

The organism is MRSA, a type of bacteria called staphylococcus aurous, or staph for short. In hospital patients, infections caused by antibiotic-resistant staph have been common for years. But it hasn't affected healthy people until now.

"It's a genetically different version of the bug that we had in the hospitals," Ballon-Landa said. He said that up until about three years ago, MRSA cases were not seen in patients coming from the community.

Doctors' offices across the county are seeing healthy people, like Janine and Ron, spread this antibiotic-resistant strain of staph.

"People in your family can get it. People at your workplace can get it. People in your athletic team can get it," Janine Borg said.

MRSA infections have been spread among healthy newborns, children, prisoners and athletes. The one common link is the degree of close body contact and sharing objects such as toys, sports equipment or soap and towels.

Doctors said infections caused by the new resistant staph are unexpectedly aggressive and delays in starting exactly the "right" antibiotics could be life-threatening.

To protect yourself from the menacing bug, doctors suggest washing your hands frequently with soap and warm water or using a hand sanitizer.

"It's spread by hands. It's spread on surfaces," Ballon-Landa said.

After 10 months on antibiotics, Janine and Ron said they are looking forward to healthier days.

"I feel better now than I have felt in five years," Ron Borg said.