one races to meet goals, it's a mission they hope will be on your screens. just a reminder you can keep up to date with all the news on the website. you can see it on the screens there, aljazeera.com. >> on "america tonight." >> this generation has got to go back and pay attention to the things that we had won are now being lost . >> and the mass he of people that we've got to move and shift from their place of comfort to seeing the world in the way we see it. >> and a couple of days later some of my blood tests came back

and they said we need to isolate you because you have an infection we have never seen before. >> the centers for disease control say it's a nightmare bacteria infecting 9,000 people a year. and it's on the move. >> thanks for joining us, i'm joie chen. it has been called a superbug. a nightmare bacteria a real threat that's cropped up in hospital he around the country. so far the outbreak has been small and contained but it is raising a serious warning especially because the evidence suggests something could have been done to event proo prevent it. the story from [ ♪music♪ ] ichael okwu. >> david richie is remembering the horrifying moments after he was hit by a train in cal cut

calcutta. he slipped and fell under a moving train. his bones cruched. rushed. medical students held him down. >> untied it, surgical knives. i know what is about to happen. when he awoke, much of his leg was gone. he was flown back to seattle for treatment. he was about to get bad news. >> they did routine tests. then my blood test came back and they said hey we need to isolate you and put you in a room by yourself. you have an infection we have never seen before. in fact there has been only a couple of cases reported in the u.s. ever. we don't know what to do. >> david was carrying a gene called mdm 1, which causes the

body to be resistant to multiple antibiotics. in other words david brought the super-bug back to the united states and it was spreading all over his body. doctors carved off more of david's legs but that wasn't enough. colostin, an antipottic so antibiotic so harsh it's rarely used. 20 minutes away from david's home, 11 people died and another 32 were sickened between 2012 and 2013 after being exposed to a super-bug. its unclear if that bug actually caused the deaths because the patients had other health problems. but this much is clear: up to half the people who get

this bug, cre, will die. the centers for disease control has called this the nightmare bacteria and says it infects more than 9,000 people per year at health care facilities and it's on the move. on monday news broke that two people have died in recent months in north carolina after coming in contact with the super-bug. and last week, in los angeles, two people, now dead, and five patients infected after being exposed to cre. since 2012, there have been outbreaks at hospitals in three other cities. philadelphia, pittsburgh and chicago. >> unfortunately i was not surprised. i believe that there are several more of these types of outbreaks occurring around the country but they have not yet been disclosed. >> biomedical engineer lawrence muskarella has outed what he thinks is the source.

a medical device called an endo endoscope. placed down the throat of a patient to investigate gas strow gastrointestinal problems. >> the last time i knew of an outbreak linked to an infected endoscope, i notified several hundred patients of their possibility of becoming infected by the endoscope. >> saying they are heart to sterilize. bacteria can hide in crevices in the devices. the infected ucla patients had end

endoscopic procedures. another 179 may have been exposed to the superbug while also undergoing the procedure. that group was notified of possible exposure just last week. >> tens of thousands of these ercp procedures are performed around the country and around the world all the time and we've not had multiple clusters of patients who are developing these super-bug infections. so we know that these cleaning protocols can work. they can be effective. >> attorney pete kaufman is representing two patients who are infected in ucla. he is suing olympus saying it didn't provide effective cleaning protocols when it rolled out its latest device.

>> we are very early in our investigation but what appears to happen is the tweak was made to the device, something that olympus has described it was a complete redesign without adjusting the cleaning protocol. if that happened, olympus was asleep at the wheel. >> did olympus get fda preeivel? did it approval?no answers. something called a 510k. >> so i think you have probably two things at work here. one, very generally, you want 510k approval because you want to get your new device on the market. >> you want to make money as soon as possible? >> absolutely. these are businesses. but you have something else that's at play. tweaking the device gives your about. so you're in a hotly quested and

hotly contest ed arena. you say doc you need to buy two or four or six of these new devices immediately because we've made this excellent change. >> kaufman has named three sales reps in his lawsuit. olympus has not returned our calls. investigation of olympus devices found problems with keeping the devices clean even with the manufacturer's dleeng cleaning protocols. >> all the five outbreaks we discussed earlier, suggests that the hospitals were cleaning and disin effectingindisinfecting the

devices. >> saying their product like all endoscopes, requires meticulous manual cleaning to ensure effective reprocessing. the company added it's monitoring the situation and is now offering video demonstrations on how to clean the devices. they also told us that you're working with the fda. but records show the fda has known about problems with dirty scopes for years. in 2009 the agency issued this safety communication. it cautioned that endoscopes are fundamentally difficult to clean and disinfect and sterilize and provided health care facilities with recommendations to deal with those revokes. over the next -- with those risks. it was virtually silent until just last week, when it issued this safety communication, about

the cleaning of the endoscopes. it was issued just two days after the ucla story broke on the front page of the los angeles times. >> i am speechless when it comes to they. when a medical device or drug is being used is harming people and it's risen to the level it has today, action knees to be needs to be done. it needs to be done two years ago. >> medical device purchasers are treated by the fda with far too much deference. >> the problem is there has to be a critical eye around to make sure that the manufacturer isn't trying to get away with taking shortcuts. >> that's true. and currently we rely on an understaffed and underfund he federal agency to do that. >> michael okwu, al jazeera.

>> so how widespread is the risk? "america tonight's" michael okwu tells us according to the cdc at least two million are infected with the bacteria and 2,000 die of it. fast forward to what's being done now. later hear a singular voice. for justice. >> how do you select the individuals if they're going to represent us? the only ones who are visible are all the personalities that emerge from the civil rights movement. >> activist harry belafonte and a new generation of dreams deferred. on "america tonight's" first part of our revolutionary series, two women two generations but one voice in the search for justice and civil

rights at aljazeera.com/americatonight.

>> in our fast forward segment the justice department estimates as many as 400,000 rape kits sat untested in jurisdictions around the country, allowing rapists to remain free and rape again. rape survivor megan said she thought reporting her assault would make a difference. >> i was just interrogated as if i was a suspect myself. they kept saying you know you can go to jail if you're making this up right? you're not just doing this for attention right? >> in 2003 a stranger attacked her in her suburban memphis, tennessee home. she was just 16 years old. >> you're sitting there 16 years old, they're saying are you sure you were raped?

how strange was it? >> it was confusing, just confusing. >> was there a moment you felt it didn't really happen to you >> no no no. >> a threat by her attacker to return and kill her if she cooperated by police, evos decided to undergo an exam to prepare a rape kit. these kits are an important tool in prosecuting sex crimes. the body of a rape victim is a crime scene, fluids, hairs and skin left behind by an attacker can be tested for dna leading to the attacker's identification. >> he came up from behind me knocked me down and then covered my face. there was no way i could identify him so the only chance i had was the dna that they were able to collect from my body. >> evos assumed her kit would be analyzed quickly. instead it sat on a shelf in a police evidence room for nine years.

>> fast forward now to an update from memphis where megan's case is part of a 12,000 kit backlog. but investigators are working through it resulting in 58 indictments so far. meantime in houston more than 6800 kits have been tested, some sat for nearly 30 years, 850 dna matches were found. justice denied for another young victim. a year since relisha rudd vanished . lori jane gliha, thursday on "america tonight." up next, he lent his voice to entertainment and activism. now harry bell fawn at belafonte speaks. to a new generation.

>> the future doesn't look so bleak.

>> there are some names, some figures of history that bring to life the civil rights movement. dr. king of course, rosa parks and one leader who first brought his voice to entertainment but also sang out for justice.

harry belafonte, an extraordinary mover, brings hi insight into a new generation of revolutionaries in the second part of our series. >> my man you look younger and younger. how you doing? >> good to see you. >> you too, you too. >> i'm delighted to be with you phillip. for a long time. many people have been asking what has happened to our youth. and where is the next generation going. for a lot of people, that has been answered by suggesting that young people are indifferent. nothing seems to motivate them. and of course with the murder of young trayvon martin, and your response to that experience developing dream defenders, i

think you instantly filled a space. have you found that my generation has been responsive to you, that you're getting what you need? >> um -- yes and no. yes and no. i think you're an example of someone from the previous generation reaching out and reaching to young people. but i think the ball dropped in between. during the civil rights movement the dominant aim and desire eventually moved towards integration. so the generation that followed you all, i believe reaped the reward of the civil rights movement. to really answer your question i think the generations before us and the folks that we still have around yourself, by moses

angela davis, other folks who have been able to carry on that legacy have been very helpful, but the goals of the civil rights movement have yet to be fully met. >> i'm struck by your observation that integration was the target for the movement. but integration, i think that is a little misunderstood. >> okay. >> we are looking to integrate into america. whether it was racial integration, economic integration, it was that we knew if we were not farther of the fabric of what this nation professed to be about, that we would never really truly touch the heartbeat of what america was about. >> i don't play the police every night in my theater. i play the 4400 american color.

as long as they keep coming, you know, the police be damned. >> when black people got the right to vote, totally in this country, it was not just the right to vote as a mechanical act. it was something that provoked the black community to have to go to someplace it had never been before. how do you select the individuals that are going to represent us? the only ones who are visible were ail the personalities that emerged from the civil rights movement. >> yes. >> that left a void and in that void, was where everybody began to say what's happened to our young? well, they were no longer being serviced. they were no longer being instructed because the leadership went off on another mission. correctly so. >> after the civil rights act and the voting rights act and dr. king's last and final crusade over the last years of his life was to shift economic policy. and i believe that was the most

dangerous part of dr. king's legacy, and what he was trying to leave, to the next generation. and so i want to ask you about that. struggle. do you think that where it's time that all of us began to have a front-facing, very capitalism? >> i think the indictment of capitalism is not a new theme . for our current history. we've always been talking about economic parity. what black people wanted not that we were rushing to become racially integrated. the specific target was to shape the economic paradigm.

>> the daw you can day you can go to sleep and act like nothing is happening, that's the day we lose. >> the murder of a man named martin lee anderson, 14 years old, killed in a boot cam in bay county, florida, it was my first-ever experience doing any type of activism, any type of protesting, the anger i had growing up poor. >> people ask me, what motivates you becoming an activist. it was poverty oppression motivated me becoming an activist in the resistance to that. >> all the groups that come together, young people that want to come -- >> we have been talking about within dream defenders, this is a larger conversation about who our target is. our target

is not coach not the koch brothers, its the mass shifting from their place of comfort to see the world the way we see it and we could collectively build a world the way we like to see it. >> i take exception at the thought that your target is not the personality like the koch brothers or barack obama. i know you could embrace why you would say that i have to challenge the fact that they in fact should be part of what you target. because these are forces that have the power to shape opinion. ♪ ♪ i'm on my way ♪ ♪ i'm on

my way ♪ ♪ god i'm on my way ♪ >> what we set out to achieve in the civil rights movement is qualitatively extended by the mission that young people today find themselves on. of all the things i think we could do as a people in this country, the most important tool at our disposal is the vote. the reason we seem to be fighting the same fight all the time is because we are fighting the same fight all the time. this generation has now got to go back and pay attention to the things we had won are now being lost because of this power play. so i think this thing we feel redundant, we're always fighting the same thing is because the enemy has always kept us in the same place. they're tenacious. >> my dear and abiding friend harry belafonte.

>> one of the things that consistently nourished my commitment to dr. king was his honesty. the fact that he remained eternally vulnerable. because he always was in question about his right to lead, his right to make decisions, and to do things that could have such an impact on human life. and one of the things that he did, in order to help him stay buoyant in the midst of the storm of decisions, was the fact that he gathered around him people whom he thought would bring him instruction or points of view that would keep him on course. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> i think we all know, at some point, what our purpose is. and the murder of trayvon seemed like people around the country wanted to do something about it. so really i just follow that.

so i was able to get back into activism during that time and since then been on a journey really to figure out and rediscover who i am and maybe what -- who i'm supposed to be. not in the eyes of anybody else. or in the eyes of society. but who i'm truly supposed to be. and also on a journey to tell other people about that journey. tell young people that look, please do not conform. please do not conform. because i think i want to say take that away from our children that desire to be different, to be unique, to question everything critically about what's around them, to question win. >> it is to be expected that all of us who are partying this this struggle for civil rights or civil liberties to be smeared and to be called names. but it requires much more than that to deter me.

>> my mission is near its end. that's just a fact of life. not maudlin. everybody dies. but in this space, i found that in philipp agnew, i have my dna, my political dna and that he wants to do it the way he's doing it tells me that the future doesn't look so bleak. >> hmm, hmm. thank you. >> thank you man. >> harry belafonte, a voice of the past and of the very present. looking to the future. that's "america tonight." tell us what you think at aljazeera.com/americatonight. talk to us on twitter or facebook, and come back. we'll have more of "america tonight," tomorrow.

>> just when it looked like america's longest war was winding down, the pentagon is talking about leaving troops in afghanistan. i'll take you on the ground in kabul. and as america's cold war in cuba stars to thaw out, you'll meet a modern day rum runner with a thirst for black market booze. i'm ali velshi and this is "real money." president obama and his new defense secretary ashton carter are reconsidering america's exit from afghanistan. almost 14