Flesh-eating bacteria kill more in U.S. than shark attacks worldwide
Pastor Dale Morgan
Flesh-eating bacteria kill more in U.S. than shark attacks worldwide*
Dangerous Bacteria in Water
Lindsay Cohen
WPEC News 12
July 9, 2007 - 6:52PM
The images are disturbing: disfigured limbs, fishermen missing fingers,
and men and women without legs. This is the human toll of a flesh-eating
bacterium called Vibrio Vulnificus. Found in warm Florida waters, more
people die of Vibrio in the United States than are killed in shark
attacks worldwide, according to numbers from the Centers for Disease
Control.
West Palm Beach resident Barbara Kamer knows the reality of these
statistics all too well.
“She's screaming, 'my leg, my leg,'" Kamer said, about the night that
her mother, Ethel Morris, began to hurt and blister from the bacteria.
"So I looked, and by this time her leg was totally black and blue from
her knee down."
Doctors believe Morris contracted Vibrio after a fishing trip at
Doctor's Lake near Jacksonville in July 2006. The 87-year-old woman had
fallen the week before, and had cut and bruised her body. Physicians
believe Morris got wet while fishing, although she never actually went
into the water. Still, Vibrio got into her bloodstream.
"I'd been fishing in there 50 years so I wasn't lookin' for nothing,"
Morris said from her home in Middleburg, near Jacksonville. "{But the}
next morning I noticed... It was turning blue and hurtin."
Morris' family rushed her to the hospital. For the next several days,
the great-great-grandmother was under heavy medication, as doctors tried
to figure out what was wrong.
One of her daughters, however, had a friend who died from similar
symptoms after spending the day riding on a watercraft on a local river.
"So that's the first thing we started asking the doctors: is it this
vibrio stuff?" says Kamer. "Oh, 'no, no,' they said."
"They told us the next morning it spread, it's the back of her leg, so
we've got to take the leg off," Kamer added. "That was really hard. We
thought, oh my goodness, she's had such a good life, she's enjoyed
herself but... Whatever it takes to save her life."
Doctors amputated almost all of Morris' right leg in order to save her
life. They fit her with a prosthesis, and Morris had to undergo about
six weeks of physical therapy to learn to walk again.
"Well, it's better a leg... Than your life, you know?" Morris said.
As Morris adjusts to her new life, Kamer has been calling state and
local health departments to find out more information about Vibrio. But
Kamer says she isn't finding a lot of information or statistics out
there; a problem that health officials say is all too common, especially
when it comes to other types of Vibrio.
"{Many cases} go undetected or {are} simply written off as a food
poisoning since testing for this was not requested or a good sample not
obtained," said Tim O'Connor of the Palm Beach County Health Department,
regarding a type of Vibro often contracted when people eat raw or
undercooked shellfish. Folks who get this type of Vibrio often
experience abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting fever and chills, but do
not experience any flesh-eating symptoms, health officials said.
The Centers for Disease Control also adds that there's no national
survey on Vibrio, so the number of cases is likely much higher than what
is reported.
That is most disturbing, says Kamer, who wants officials to put warning
signs along lakes, rivers, and oceans where people have contracted Vibrio.
"In my town, they put {signs up that say}, don't mess with the turtles,
and don't do this and that," she says. "Why can't you put a sign that,
if you go in the water, you might die?"
"It's all about tourism, and that's my thoughts," she added.
Morris, meanwhile, maintains a positive attitude.
"Well, I'm happy," she says. "The joy of the lord is my strength."
"I never have cried about it. I just thank god I got one {leg} left,"
she said, smiling.
For a county-by-county breakdown of Vibrio cases in Florida, log onto
the state health department website. The link is below.
Below, you will also find links to the unedited interviews of Vibrio
victim Ethel Morris and her daughter, Barbara Kamer.