Plagues,
Pestilences and Diseases
Mystery deepens over E.coli outbreak
June 4, 2011
AFP
Russia has banned the import of raw vegetables from the European
Union because of a deadly E.coli outbreak centred in Germany.
An outbreak of killer E. coli that has spread to 12 countries and
killed up to 21 people may be linked to a Hamburg festival in May
and could have caused a 20th death, according to reports.
As authorities continued to hunt the source of the killer bug,
Germany's national disease centre, the Robert Koch Institute
(RKI), is looking closely at a harbour festival that took place in
Hamburg on May 6-8.
The weekly newspaper Focus said on Saturday the festival drew 1.5
million visitors from Germany and abroad, and noted that the first
reported case of E. coli infection followed just a week later in
the city's university hospital.
German media also said on Saturday a man in his 50s who died in
Brandenberg may be the 21st victim, but the cause of death was
uncertain because he had several other infections as well as E.
coli.
The latest confirmed death was of an 80-year-old woman in the
northern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Friday.
She succumbed as German authorities were still warning consumers
off raw vegetables, despite the EU's Reference Laboratory for E.
coli in Rome saying scientific tests had failed to support a link
to the outbreak.
Faced with uncertainty over the source of the outbreak, reports
said police were investigating a possible deliberate act and were
checking two restaurants in the northern town of Lubeck, one in
which 17 diners fell ill and another in which eight women were
sickened.
On Thursday, German authorities said the number of new infections
appeared to be stabilising.
But Reinhard Brunkhorst, president of the German Nephrology
Society, added: "We are dealing here... with the biggest epidemic
caused by bacteria in recent decades."
All but one of the fatalities since the outbreak of
enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) poisoning began last month have
occurred in Germany. A patient who died in Sweden had recently
returned from Germany.
Regional German health authorities have reported more than 2000
cases of people falling ill with EHEC poisoning, with symptoms
including stomach cramps, diarrhoea, fever and vomiting.
The fact that a large majority are female suggests that the source
is "probably something that women prefer more than men", Andrea
Ellis, an epidemiologist at the World Health Organisation's (WHO)
department of food safety, said in Geneva.
In some cases the infection can lead to bloody diarrhoea and
potentially life-threatening conditions such as haemolytic uraemic
syndrome (HUS), a kidney disease.
At least 552 people, 520 of them in Germany, have HUS, according
to the WHO, with 10 other European countries plus the United
States reporting HUS or EHEC infections.
The outbreak was "the largest epidemic of HUS to have occurred
anywhere in the world", according to Francois-Xavier Weill, head
of France's National Reference Centre for E. coli.
Britain confirmed four more cases of poisoning on Friday, bringing
the total number of infected in the country to 11.
Each is related to German travel and three of the patients have
HUS, the Health Protection Agency said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel meanwhile defended last week's
false cucumber alert in a phone call on Thursday with Prime
Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, saying authorities were
"duty-bound to inform the public at all times".
The advisory, retracted this week, left tens of thousands of
tonnes of Spanish produce unsold, costing Spanish growers an
estimated 200 million euros ($A272.15 million) a week.
Both Berlin and Madrid said they had agreed to seek compensation
at the European level.
Hungary, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said it
aimed to hold an extraordinary meeting of the bloc's farm
ministers to discuss the outbreak, most likely on June 17.
With no clarity on the source of the mysterious bacteria, the
outbreak has led some countries such as Russia and Lebanon to ban
vegetables from the EU, in moves criticised by the 27-member bloc.