How, When and Who Else?

What is happening here really?



"Brazilian model Mariana Bridi da Costa, whose hands and feet were amputated in a bid to save her from a deadly and little-known illness, died early Saturday."

"It was a nightmare scenario for anyone with an infection: Her body did not react to the latest and most potent drugs while the bacteria in her veins spread from head to toe.

In Bridi's case, the culprit was the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which is known to be drug resistant.

According to the January 2008 book "Pseudomonas: Genomics and Molecular Biology," edited by Pierre Cornelis, a researcher at the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology in Brussels, the bacteria has the "worrisome characteristic" of "low antibiotic susceptibility." It also easily mutates to develop resistance to new drugs.

Death from infections caused by the bacteria are relatively rare, but not unheard of: In late 2006, an outbreak of the bacteria at White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles sickened five infants — leading to the deaths of two of them.

The bacteria causes about 10 percent of the roughly two million hospital-acquired infections each year in the U.S., according to health officials."

OK, why am I seemingly the only person concerned about this? How can a seemingly low grade, low risk urinary infection kill you in a matter of days? And how did she contract this bacteria? You have to believe it's incredibly contagious so where's the sense of urgency to locate the source and somehow eliminate it?

And, how do I prevent me and my family from contracting something similar? WHY ISN'T ANYONE DEMANDING TO KNOW HOW THIS HAPPENED? I'm feeling especially vulnerable all of a sudden. I will need an answer to this question before I feel better. It will plague me until then.

Long live hand sanitizer only right now I want to put it all over my body.