State's hospitals must come clean on germs - Sacramento Politics - California Politics | Sacramento Bee.
On her second night home after giving birth by Caesarean section to her fourth child, Cindy Gaston's incision burst open and pus began oozing out. Doctors at Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael, where she had given birth, later determined she was infected with methicillin-resistant staph aureus, or MRSA. The strain of a once-innocuous staph infection that has become invulnerable to first-line antibiotics kills more people each year than the AIDS virus and in most cases is contracted in hospitals. Beginning Thursday, legislation will be phased in requiring all 400 hospitals in the state to implement tougher infection control practices to stem outbreaks.
