“Aker University Hospital is a dingy place to heal. The floors are streaked and scratched. A light layer of dust coats the blood pressure monitors. A faint stench of urine and bleach wafts from a pile of soiled bedsheets dropped in a corner.”
This is how an Associated Press story, published in the New York Times last week, begins. The next sentence comes as a surprise:
“Look closer, however, at a microscopic level, and this place is pristine. There is no sign of a dangerous and contagious staph infection that killed tens of thousands of patients in the most sophisticated hospital of Europe, North America and Asia this year, soaring virtually unchecked.