Rio De Janeiro: A 20-year-old Brazilian beauty queen who was fighting for her life after contracting a drug resistant infection died on Saturday.
Mariana Bridi died on Saturday from complications related to a generalised infection caused by the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the Espirito Santo State Health Secretariat said in a statement.
Doctors amputated both her hands and feet in a desperate bid to save her, but she succumbed to the bacteria which is resistant to multiple kinds of antibiotics and reduced the flow of oxygen to her limbs.
Bridi also underwent surgery to have part of her stomach removed as doctors tried to contain internal bleeding
"God is comforting our hearts because he wanted her to be with him now," her father Agnaldo Costa told reporters outside the hospital where his daughter died. "I can't accept that my daughter left us so soon."
The short statement, the Secretariat announced her death on Saturday "despite all the commitment of the hospital team."
The beauty was twice a finalist in the Brazilian stage of the Miss World pageant. She was living the dream of many young Brazilian women, trading her striking good looks for a modeling career that promised to lift her family out of poverty.
The Miss World Brazil organisation said she was an example of someone "who knew how to intensely live her life."
Half a dozen memorial groups on Facebook had already sprung up just hours after her death. On Bridi's own page on Orkut, the most popular web social networking site in Brazil, dozens of memorial messages were left.
