Published: Sunday, August 4, 2013 at 6:10 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, August 4, 2013 at 6:10 p.m.
Annie McGill is reminded daily of the disease that nearly killed her.
More than a decade ago, the 76-year-old Laurinburg, N.C. woman was infected with fungal meningitis from a contaminated steroid injection made in Spartanburg.
McGill can barely walk and she can't drive. Her body hurts from head to toe, and she has frequent headaches.
“I'm still in doctors' offices,” she said in a phone interview with the Herald-Journal. “It damaged all the different parts of my body … But I'm lucky not to be dead.
Legislators have advanced a bill in the U.S. Senate that establishes measures aimed to help prevent another outbreak of infections from drugs produced in compounding facilities, as well as implement a uniform way to track the dispersal if drugs.
A coalition of U.S. Senators recently urged action on the legislation.
The Pharmaceutical Quality, Security and Accountability Act, if passed, would distinguish between traditional compounders and compounding manufacturers, and bring the later under the supervision of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The bill is in response to a fungal meningitis outbreak that began in the fall of 2012 and led to 61 deaths and 749 illnesses.
As she watched the latest outbreak unfold, McGill questioned if anything was learned from the 2002 outbreak that sickened her and several others.
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