Flint water crisis claims its youngest Legionnaires' victim to date

The funeral for one of the youngest victims of Legionnaires’ disease was held Sunday in Flint, Michigan. Jassmine McBride, only 30 years old, contracted the deadly lung disease at the height of the Flint water crisis in 2014. Her death brings the total to 13 people who have died from it. The disease infected at least 90 people.

During a routine visit to McLaren Flint Hospital to treat diabetes in August 2014, when Jassmine was just 26 years old, she was diagnosed with Legionnaires’ disease. According to a local news report at the time, Jassmine’s mother Jacqueline was devastated and shocked: “The hospital called and said, ‘Do we have permission to resuscitate your daughter?’ I couldn’t understand what happened. She just went to get an iron supplement.”

The bacteria had attacked her lungs, leaving her with very little ability to take in sufficient oxygen to live. At that time, Jassmine spent two months heavily sedated in the intensive care unit. Her life was changed forever. Before contracting Legionnaires’, she was a young woman who was active in the band at Central High School, loved to dance and enjoyed singing in her church choir. Although she became unable to physically attend college, she was a determined young woman and began taking online classes to become a medical biller. Before her death, she was permanently tied to an oxygen tank and home-bound.

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