E. coli death toll rises
Pastor Dale Morgan
E. coli death toll rises
*Outbreak also claims 83-year-old Washington woman's life.
Updated 1/27/2007 1:20 PM ET
By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
The E. coli outbreak that swept the country this fall, killing three
people, claimed its fourth victim Friday.
Meanwhile, there was new evidence that a death occurring back in
September may have been part of the same tragedy, which could raise the
death toll to five.
The latest victim is 83-year-old Elizabeth, "Betty" Howard of Richland,
Wash., who died Friday of heart failure in a rehabilitation facility
after a nearly five-month long battle with E. coli O157:H7, her son
Darryl Howard said.
The other victim was June Dunning, 86, of Hagerstown, Md., who died
Sept. 13, said Warren Swartz, Dunning's son-in-law. She tested positive
for E. coli O157:H7 at the hospital. But because the Maryland Dept. of
Health lost culture samples from her illness, the state was unable to
confirm the cause of her illness so she had not been officially included
in the death toll.
However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed in a
letter to Dunning's family Thursday that tests on the two bags of
spinach in her refrigerator were positive for a closely related, and
potentially fatal form of the bacteria, E. Coli 0146:H21.
The letter from Cheryl Bopp at CDC's division of Foodborne Diseases
states that the type of E. coli found in Dunning's spinach was
"indistinguishable" from that found in a sample of spinach from Illinois
"which also yielded the outbreak strain of E. coli O157:H7."
In October Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director of the Center for
Science in the Public Interest, had sent a public letter to the CDC
asking that Dunning be included in the death toll because of the strong
circumstances linking her death to the others.
The outbreak was traced to pre-washed, bagged spinach from processor
Natural Selection Foods of San Juan Bautista, Calif., sold by Dole. It
sickened 199 people in 26 states, according to the Food and Drug
Administration.
Howard became ill after eating a turkey sandwich with spinach on it. She
had been living independently in her own home until she became ill with
the O157:H7 strain of the virus. She went into the hospital on Sept. 7
several days after eating the sandwich and never returned home.
"E. coli is like running the blood through razor blades. It devastates
every part of the body," her son said. He said his mother worked for
years as a secretary at the Dept. of Energy's Hanford (Wash.) Nuclear site.
Howard's medical bills in the rehabilitation center where she died were
paid for by the Dole company's insurer, her lawyer, William Marler said.
Dunning became ill after eating spinach salad on Aug. 28 of last year.
On Sept. 2 she was hit with "horrible, bloody diarrhea," Swartz said.
She went into the hospital and never came home.
On Sept. 6 doctors told the family that they'd gotten results back from
the stool sample they'd taken when Dunning first entered the hospital
and that she had E. coli O157:H7.
"We said 'What's that? It sounds like something from Mars," Swartz said.
"The doctor said 'It's very rare and in over 30 years of practice I've
never seen it.' " The infectious disease doctor told them that it came
from hamburger.
"We said she doesn't eat hamburger, she loves vegetables," Swartz said.
Dunning fell into a coma that evening and died on Sept. 13.
Born in Catford, England, she married an American and moved to the
United States after the end of her husband's 20-year-career in the U.S
Army, her son-in-law said.
After her death, Swartz looked up E. coli on the Internet and realized
that there was a nationwide outbreak associated with spinach. In their
refrigerator Swartz found a half-eaten bag of pre-washed Dole baby
spinach with the same use-by date and lot number implicated in the outbreak.
He and his wife Corinne turned the bags over to the Maryland Dept. of
Health and Mental Hygiene, which passed them along to the CDC, he said.
Other deaths related to the outbreak include Ruby Trautz, 81, of Omaha,
Kyle Allgood, 2, of Chubbuck, Idaho, and Marion Graff, 77, of Manitowoc,
Wisc.