For Kerri Cardello McKoy, mother of four, a trip to the hospital
to treat a broken nose in 2003 seemed routine. But what followed
wasn't: a raging MRSA infection that cost her both legs below
the knee, a collapsed lung and four months in a hospital bed,
much of it in a drug-induced coma. "When I think about it, it
makes me want to cry," she says. Almost five years later, public
health officials, hospitals and legislators are still arguing
over the best way to curb MRSA, the drug-resistant bug that cost
the Annapolis woman her legs and could be killing up to 19,000
people a year nationwide. Experts can't agree on whether
hospitals are doing enough to address the growing number of MRSA
infections - or whether government should make them take action.
Advocates say the recent defeat of two MRSA bills in Annapolis
leaves thousands of hospital and nursing home patients more
vulnerable to the deadly pathogen. "It doesn't make any sense.
The data, the science, the evidence, everything we know about
this says that we