According to reports in news media outlets, you are more likely to die from an infection picked up in a hospital than you are from dying from AIDS, a car accident, and breast cancer – COMBINED! The CDC reports that 100,000 Americans die from infections picked up in hospitals every year! That’s 250 a day! This is a serious health problem reaching epidemic proportions.

Causes? One big reason is hospital workers and doctors failing to wash their hands and equipment properly. When was the last time someone put a sterile protector on your arm before attaching that blood pressure cuff? How about that tape they stick on over cuts and stitches and gauze? Does the doctor or nurse wash their hands in your presence before treating you? These are a few examples of actual ways bacteria is transmitted from one sick patient to another. The list is much longer.

Pennsylvania has just passed legislation that will require hospitals to publish their “infection rates.” I think we need more of this truth made available online, for hospitals and doctors!

Bottom line – don’t go to a hospital unless it is absolutely necessary! If you must go, or you are responsible for someone else in a hospital, insist on seeing hospital workers washing hands and equipment! It could be your own life or a loved one you are saving!