In November 2006, a minor lung infection of a 10 year-old Florida girl turned into full-blown pneumonia and a MRSA infection that kept little Hannah Ryan paralyzed in a Manatee Memorial Hospital bed for four months, barely fending off death. More than a year after getting sick, Hannah was still undergoing treatment to combat the infection. Her mother, Kim Ryan, had never heard of MRSA and told reporter Tiffany Lankes of The Herald Tribune in January 2008 that, "Words can not explain how awful it was to live through it."

MRSA is spreading rapidly across the country and is appearing more and more in schools. "It aggravates me when someone gets on TV and says this is nothing to panic about," Ryan said. "I wish I knew some of the simple things that might have prevented this." As her daughter recovers, Kim Ryan is pushing for awareness. Ryan is working with her daughter's new school, Buffalo Creek Middle, to put hand sanitizers in every classroom. Ryan is also advocating for hand sanitizers in all classrooms across the county. She visits parent meetings and doctors' offices to hand out information. She believes if more parents know about the infection, it will be more properly diagnosed, and most of all, prevented.

"We now know that MRSA kills more people than AIDS," Ryan said. "Doesn't everybody know what AIDS is? Why doesn't everyone know about MRSA?"

To read more of Lankes' article, click here http://www.heraldtribune.com/.