If Sarah Sellers' warnings had been taken seriously 10 years ago, 12 people might be alive today.

Sellers, a pharmacist and expert on the sterile compounding of drugs, testified to Congress in 2003 about non-sterile conditions she'd witnessed.

"Professional standards for sterile compounding have not been consistently applied," she told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. "The absence of federal compounding regulations has created vulnerability in our gold standard system for pharmaceutical regulation."

Nearly 10 years later, there are still no federal sterility guidelines for compounding pharmacies that make and distribute drugs all over the country.

Now, 137 cases and 12 fatalities nationwide are blamed on a rare, noncontagious form of meningitis linked to contaminated steroid injections made by the Massachusetts-based New England Compounding Center.

The latest death to be connected to the outbreak was that of a 70-year-old man who died in Florida in July, prior to the discovery of the contamination.

Tennessee is the hardest-hit state, with 39 infections and six deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Three deaths occurred in Michigan and one each in Maryland and Virginia, the CDC said.

Patients contracted the deadly meningitis after being injected in their spines with a preservative-free steroid called methylprednisolone acetate that was contaminated by a fungus. The steroid is used to treat pain and inflammation.

As many as 13,000 people may have received the medicine between May 21 and September 24, the CDC said.

The New England Compounding Center announced Wednesday it has established a recall operations center to manage the removal of all its products from circulation. Last week, the pharmacy voluntarily surrendered its license to operate until the Food and Drug Administration's investigation into the contamination is complete.

Health officials say 75 medical facilities in 23 states received the contaminated steroid injections from NECC.

At least two lawmakers are introducing bills to strengthen the FDA's oversight of compounding pharmacies.

"Unfortunately, compounding pharmacies are a 19th century service operating in a 21st century industry, and we need to update and strengthen the rules that govern these operations so that patients can safely benefit from the unique service they offer," Rep. Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, said in a statement. "I look forward to working with my colleagues to introduce this legislation and to ensure FDA has the authority it needs to oversee these pharmacies and protect patients."

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Connecticut, vowed similar action. "This outbreak and the corresponding recall of products from the New England Compounding Center expose dramatic gaps in our drug safety standards that create an unnecessary risk to the public health," she wrote in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

While compounding pharmacies were intended to create customized medications for specific patients, some "have evolved into large scale operations that produce sizeable quantities of some drugs," she wrote. "For example, cases in the current outbreak are spread across nine states and more than 17,500 doses of the potentially contaminated drug were shipped to 23 states. At the same time, the FDA lacks clear authority for ensuring the safety of these products and last updated its guidance for (the) industry in 2002."

The FDA has been working on new guidelines since at least 2006, but the effort is "still in progress," FDA spokeswoman Erica Jefferson said.

Currently, the FDA does not have jurisdiction over compounding pharmacies until there is a problem. FDA officials say they have been fighting to change that for more than 20 years.

The compounding pharmacy industry has challenged those efforts, and courts have ruled that individual state health departments are in charge.

"These facilities are inspected upon initial licensure and in response to complaints," said Alec Loftus of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

Massachusetts requires compound pharmacies to be licensed by the state board, but does not require accreditation. That's a voluntary process that only 162 out of 3,000 compounding facilities have obtained, according to the Pharmacy Compounding Accreditation Board.