Margo Bavry, a Virginia Beach homemaker, went into the hospital for a foot operation and then to a nursing home for rehab. It healed completely. But then, she developed the MRSA infection.

“I was on the brink of death, the brink of death and I survived," she says.

MRSA is a life-threatening bacterial infection that resists treatment.

Her husband Larry was terrified.

“It was in her lungs and it was spreading, I guess, through her blood and they knew it was in her bones." 

Margo was moved to the critical care unit.   “She as pretty much comatose for four weeks,” Larry recalls.

After coming out of the coma, she was flown to VCU-MCV Campus for spine surgery to remove infected bone. That left Margo paralyzed.

After all this, she doesn't know precisely where she picked up the staph infection.

"MRSA is out there and extremely dangerous. It can change your life.  Did mine," she says through her tears.

Delegate Bob Purkey (R-82nd D., Va. Beach) knows exactly where he contracted a bacterial infection.  He’d gone to a hospital for tests on his neck following a serious car accident.

"For 10 days, I stayed there, trying to have them cure the infection I acquired in the hospital," he says.

One night, Purkey says, the nurse looked at his left hand and arm, which had started turning bright red, and told him he could lose his hand.

Getting MRSA in the community usually involves a skin infection, but it's more common and has far more deadly consequences when contracted in a hospital, where MRSA and other invasive bacteria have a 25-percent death rate.

Area hospitals are stepping up their efforts to reduce the spread of MRSA by emphasizing basic hygiene.

"The real value is you stop people getting sick with these horrible organisms," said Dr. Gene Burke, Medical Director, Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.

They're emphasizing basic hygiene -- gloves, gowns and hand washing -- to prevent the spread of bacteria to other patients or to items like computers or countertops where MRSA can survive.

They’re also encouraging patients to ask hospital staff if they washed their hands.

Chesapeake Regional Medical Center is experimenting with drug-coated sutures to try to reduce infection.

Sentara Norfolk General and Sentara Careplex in Hampton are now screening patients in the general intensive care unit for MRSA.

"(It’s) an absolutely indefensible position that people should get infection when they come to the hospital," says Dr. Burke.

If a culture shows MRSA, whether it’s an infection or just bacteria present on the skin, the patient goes into isolation.

Dr. Burke and Tina Marie Liske, RN, MSN, the general intensive care unit manager at SEntara Norfolk General say about 16 percent of patients are admitted with MRSA on their skin that staff didn't know about.

Sentara says the isolation steps are working. Officials say there’ve been maybe two people who’ve converted to actual MRSA infections since the program started 10 months ago.

Exactly how many people get infected with MRSA while hospitalized is unknown.

Hospitals release some infection data to the government but not enough for prospective patients to compare infection rates.

New incentives are coming to help hospitals reduce infection.

In 2008, Medicare begins not reimbursing hospital for the care of patients who acquired an infection in the hospital.  MRSA comes in 2009.

In 2005, Virginia joined 19 other states demanding hospitals provide consumers with information on infection rates.   In 2008, Virginia hospitals will begin revealing their infection rates to the public.

Delegate Purkey battled years of resistance among Virginia lawmakers and hospital lobbyists before getting the measure passed.

"This isn't rocket science. They keep the data. They have the data. They assimilate the data.  Now they're gonna share the data with the public," he explains.

The chairman of the New-York based Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths describes Virgina's law as disappointing and vague: 

In an e-mail to 13 news, Betsy McCoy writes, “ …. Unlike 16 states, this state does not guarantee immediate public access to the data in a usable form.”

Virgina's law doesn't legally mandate reporting.  It suggests hospitals report infection rates to the State Board of Health.

"They're gonna comply because if they don't, they know it'll be mandated," Purkey stresses.

The public is demanding the right to know how much MRSA is in health care settings, swayed in large part by a recent government report that estimates invasive MRSA kills more Americans each year than HIV.