A mother almost died after eating tilapia contaminated with potentially deadly bacteria. To save her, doctors had to amputate all four of her limbs.
A friend of Laura Barajas says that it was after buying fish at a San José market and cooking it at home that the 40-year-old Californian began to get sick, reports the New York Post.
“It has been very difficult for all of us. It’s awful. It could have happened to any of us,” Anna Messina, a friend of Barajas, told KRON, a local channel. “He almost lost his life. “She was on a respirator,” she adds.
Laura Barajas was in an artificial coma for several weeks. She “she had black fingers, black feet, black lower lip. She was suffering from complete sepsis and her kidneys were failing,” explains Mrs. Messina.
The latter maintains that her friend was infected by the potentially deadly bacteria Vibrio vulnificus present in raw seafood and seawater, according to the New York Post.
A specialist explained to KRON how people can become contaminated with Vibrio vulnificus. “You can eat something contaminated with it or get a cut or tattoo exposed to the water where this virus lives,” says Dr. Natasha Spottiswoode, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco.
This bacteria is especially worrying for immunosuppressed people, adds the specialist.
According to the CDC, approximately 150 to 200 cases of Vibrio vulnificus are reported each year in the United States, and one in five infected people die from this disease.
The family of Laura Barajas, mother of a 6-year-old boy, wants to know what exactly happened. It is possible that the tilapia cooked by Ms. Barjas was undercooked.
A GoFundMe page has been created to allow the family to pay for hospital expenses and help Laura Barajas start her new life.
