Through recent media and/or news one may have become familiarized with the bacteria based infection/condition known as "Necrotizing Fasciitis." This infection has also seemed to have earned its recognition within the medical world, and has even earned the nickname known as the "flesh eating bacteria." The common consensus with most reveal that NF is known to be a rare disease, however, an epidemic of this infection could in the future be very likely and incredibly problematic, by it's infectious nature, current behavior as aggressive bacteria, and even matters considering our own hygienic practices.    
          
To understand why or how, this disease is dangerous; one must understand the basic nature of the disease.  For the most part, the disease known as NF usually occurs in a pre-existing wound, or more commonly in a wound that is already infected with bacteria. It can also occur within people that have very low immune system levels. People that have immune-deficiencies and/or or obese are especially susceptible to NF. NF was first recognized as a serious condition around the 1800's, when it had one of its first major breakouts in Europe to America. The symptoms of NF are one particularly troublesome feature, as the infection has the ability to be incredibly seem less, right onto  a fatal stage of infection, which has always caused at the least severe skin/limb/muscle removal The primary onset of symptoms are typical of your average sickness, or bacterial infection such as a basic sinus infection.  They include maybe a slight fever, or maybe a rash and tiredness within the carrier of the bacteria. What is a rash at the moment however, will QUICKLY become a decomposition of the previously affected skin (known as gangrene). If this is left unmoved, the severing rash will reach inner tissue and muscle, and even in extreme cases, the bone area, insuring complete, irreversible infection, and organ loss. How all of these aspects of NF greatly deal with the issue of its own spread, it can be assumed that if there WAS an outbreak in today's environment, by the typical hygiene practices of the majority of current world citizens, the results would be devastating. Although a dramatic situation you would have thousands of people experiencing severe tissue loss at a time, which would most likely come to national attention and urgency.
          
To further understand why the massive outbreak of this bacteria based disease would be incredibly severe, one may also need to understand its basic nature of infection, and how it normally affects the population that is initially infected. NF exists as a fatal bacterial infection with a very high fatality rate, with 20% of people being treated, and of course a 100% fatality rate among people who are not properly treated. With these rates, there are about 10,000 to 11,000 cases of the NF causing bacteria per year, with a staggering 2000 deaths, with this statistic growing periodically higher due to the steady increase in population.  There is no solely medicinal method of ridding the disease/infection from the individual, but instead will usually include having to completely remove the infected tissue of the victim. This of course causes major physical change for the people that even survive the disease, because the infection speed is so rapid. For the most part, the disease known as NF usually occurs in a pre-existing wound, or more commonly in a wound that is already infected with bacteria. It can also occur within people that have very low immune system levels. People that have immune-deficiencies and/or or obese are especially susceptible to NF, and within a population dense environment such as the United States or China, this and previously mention factors of NF could well lead to an outbreak. 
	
Although the issue at question is if there is to be a massive outbreak of NF, smaller outbreaks have actually occurred in the past, meaning a larger scale infection is most definitely probable. Starting on February 1st, a 60 year old man was first diagnosed with NF in the "Hospital Escuela" in Honduras. Although no transfusion error was recording, 3 weeks later many others within the hospital became infected, with at least 2 people dying within the hospital per week. To make the matter even more obvious that this infection was indeed spread throughout all of the patients, every patient with the same immuno-disorder got the infection, along the same area as well. (In the groinal region.) This case effectively shows how quickly the disease has the potential of spreading within a small environment, and even this case, a hospital. Another recent case of NF showed that it is actually possible to contract and spread the disease without any intrusion of the skin, or immune system. A man from a Hilton Head resort in February 2012 was able to contract to disease without any of the common contraction conditions, including any visible wounds on his entire body. It can be medically assumed from this that it is possible to contract the disease simply through touching other objects that have the infection living on it, realizing its current status as an infectious disease. One final case worth mentioning actually proved that the bacteria can stick onto products, AND be further provoked by certain drug use. In California 1999, the use of black tar heroin has indirectly and directly caused a huge outbreak of NF. First, the substance itself was causing extreme immune deficiencies with the people who used the substance. With the immune systems weakened, many users were then able to catch NF at once. Since many of the dealers were always users of the drug, they assumedly infected the drug itself by handling it infected other buyers. This quickly spread and soon 10 cases instantly of NF instantly showed up, with 6 immediate deaths at that one time, with many more to follow. From this event, it can be implied that the NF infection may also latch onto food stock such as meat products or other preserved foods. If this were to happen, an outbreak on a much larger scale could occur, posing a huge threat. With the conditions of NF, and newfound behavior discoveries of the disease found, Necrotizing Fasciitis serves as a huge threat as a silent, permissible, quickly killing disease. Cases of the disease in fact become more common every medical consensus.  
             
Bad practices of hygiene make this existence of this disease an even bigger threat, as it is very contagious. Many studies have shown that a large amount of citizens from about any given area does indeed have sub-optimal hygiene practices. Many national studies have been conducted to truly see what percentages of populations actually practice and the numbers do support the claim that hygiene is rarely practiced perfectly. According to a study done by H.S.UK (Hygienic Solutions UK), 60% of men on average do not even wash their hands after exiting the restroom, along with 40% of females not doing the same. An even more concerning study shows that 53% of people working at culinary institutions actually do not wash their hands even before preparing food. Theoretically ,  this provides that within any food establishment with a reasonable amount of workers preparing the food, at least one of them may not even be washing their hands before preparing food, and that half of those who didn't wash their hands also did not do so after previously using a restroom. It can now be assumed that with a restaurant chain which has multiple employees preparing food, that there will most likely be at least one employee who has come in contact with bacteria that is preparing food, a thought that definitely doesn't settle so easily. With these numbers provided one can question the common hygienic practices of said establishments, but then one may question not about the people who prepare food, but people who eat it. Although finding a general statistic on the majority of people who are consuming food to be difficult and even disruptive to subjects, Hygienic Solutions U.K. was able to gather this type of information on teenagers, and achieve solid numbers. According to H.S.U.K., "Over half the teenagers surveyed said they did not always wash their hands before eating lunch at school, even though two-thirds had a meal such as a packed lunch or burger and chips which they had to eat using their hands" (1). Although the disclaimer states that 2/3's of the teenagers stated that they were talking about personally packed lunches, it still shows that a solid 1/3 of these people did get food prepared by others, which then previously mentioned statistics stated that half of these teenagers may get food that was prepared by someone who did not wash their hands. With these numbers, one can conclude that one's average amount of exposure to microorganisms contracted by bad hygiene is quite high, and that many people are at risk of contracting severe infections such as Necrotizing Fasciitis within high population areas, if it were to reach common establishments found in your average environment. 
