If you must go into a hospital, do you ever expect to get a life- threatening infection there? Every year two million Americans contract a hospital-acquired infection - one in every 20 patients becomes ill and 90,000 of them die.

You can help stop hospital infections in your state, click here.

Hospitals keep these infections secret from everyone, even though infection rates are on the rise. Healthcare workers wash their hands far less than they should, particularly in critical areas like intensive care, surgery, anesthesia and the emergency room.

Making infection rates public will help you find out about the safety record of your local hospital and will give hospitals a strong incentive to more seriously deal with a problem that can add up to $57,000 to your hospital bill.

Only four states now have laws requiring hospitals to reveal their infection rates, but you can help change that. Just click here and send an email to your state legislators to ask them to require hospitals to publicly report their infection rates.

It's urgent to act today, at the beginning of your state's legislative session.

Jim Guest
Executive Director
Consumers Union of the U.S.
101 Truman Ave.
Yonkers, NY 10703