Tag Archives: Death

Antifreeze-tainted vinegar kills 11 in China, 120 poisoned

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Vinegar contaminated with anti-freeze was suspected of causing the deaths of 11 people who ate an evening feast during the ongoing Ramadan holiday in a Muslim area of China.

Local police told state media that vinegar stored in two plastic barrels that had previously contained anti-freeze was thought to be the cause of mass poisoning after about 150 people ate together on Friday evening in a remote village in Pishan county in the western region of Xinjiang.

Investigations were continuing and toxicity tests had still not confirmed the source of the poisoning, the official Xinhua news agency quoted a police statement as saying.

The statement said about 120 people were poisoned with one person still in critical condition by Monday.
 

One dead, 10 sick from E. coli O157:H7 traced to Oregon strawberry farm

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Oregon Public Health officials have identified fresh strawberries from a Newberg, Oregon, farm as the source of a cluster of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infections that sickened at least 10 people last month, including one person who died.

The strawberries were produced last month by Jaquith Strawberry Farm located at 23135 SW Jaquith Road in Newberg. Jaquith finished its strawberry season in late July, and its strawberries are no longer on the market. Jaquith sold its strawberries to buyers who then resold them at roadside stands and farmers’ markets.

Health officials are urging consumers who may have purchased strawberries grown on this farm to throw them out.

Strawberries that have been frozen or made into uncooked jam are of particular concern. Cooking kills E. coli O157:H7 bacteria.

"If you have any strawberries from this producer – frozen, in uncooked jam or any uncooked form – throw them out," says Paul Cieslak, M.D., from Oregon Public Health Division. He says people who have eaten the strawberries, but remain well need take no action. The incubation period for E. coli O157:H7 is typically two to seven days.

Ten people have confirmed an E. coli O157:H7 infection caused by a single strain. These individuals include residents of Washington, Clatsop, and Multnomah counties. Six other people in northwest Oregon also have recently developed an E. coli O157:H7 infection and appear to be part of this outbreak.

Of the confirmed cases, four have been hospitalized, and one elderly woman in Washington County died from kidney failure associated with E. coli O157:H7 infection. There were 12 females and four males among the cases, and their ages ranged from 4 to 85. They fell ill between July 10 and July 29.

Indiana girl’s E. coli death linked to petting zoo?

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Kalei Welch, a 5-year-old girl in Hendricks County, Indiana, has died and health officials say E. coli is to blame.

About a week ago, she came down with flu-like symptoms.

Her parents took her to the hospital. Kalei died Thursday.

New reports say it’s believed the little girl contracted the E. coli two weeks ago at the Hendricks County Fair.

"The petting zoo part of a fair really can be a dangerous place because they’re touching the animals," said Marc Monte, a family spokesperson. "The animals sometimes have this bacteria on them. If hands are not washed or if they depend on just the sanitizer, that can be not a good thing."

The health department is still working to determine with more certainty where Kalei picked up the bacteria. The fairgrounds are only one possibility.

A table of past petting zoo related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/petting-zoos-outbreaks.
 

Cook sprouts: Egyptian seeds most likely source of deadly E. coli

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A single shipment of fenugreek seeds from Egypt is the most likely source of a highly toxic E. coli epidemic in Germany which has killed 49 people and of a smaller outbreak in France, European investigators said on Tuesday.

The European Food Safety Authority urged the European Commission to make "all efforts" to prevent any further consumer exposure to suspect seeds and advised consumers not to eat sprouts or sprouted seeds unless they are thoroughly cooked.

Reuters reports more than 4,100 people in Europe and in North America have been infected in two outbreaks of E. coli infection — one centred in northern Germany and one focused around the French city of Bordeaux.

Almost all of those affected in the first outbreak — the deadliest on record — lived in Germany or had recently travelled there. The infection has killed 48 people in Germany and one person in Sweden so far.

"The analysis of information from the French and German outbreaks leads to the conclusion that an imported lot of fenugreek seeds which was used to grow sprouts imported from Egypt by a German importer is the most common likely link," the EFSA said in a statement.

A consignment of fenugreek seeds, from the batch believed to be the source of the EHEC infection in Germany and France, has been tracked to Sweden, according to the Swedish National Food Administration.

The seeds have been recalled but 25 kilos have already arrived in Sweden. The National Food Administration has contacted the company Econova in Norrköping, who in their turn have stopped the sales and recalled already delivered bags of seeds.

French woman dies of E. coli

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A 78-year-old woman in Bordeaux, France died from E. coli on Saturday morning, but it was not the same strain that has killed 50 related to sprouts in Germany.

She had been hospitalized since June 24 with hemolytic uremic syndrome — the kidney condition that the most seriously ill victims of the outbreak are suffering from.

Seven other patients remain at the same French hospital, six of whom have been confirmed to have the same strain of E.coli O104 as in the outbreak that originated in Germany. European health experts said Thursday that contaminated Egyptian fenugreek seeds were likely the source of that deadly outbreak.

In Sweden, the centre for communicable diseases (Smittskyddet) in Skåne, is now giving up attempts to find the source behind the first Swedish infection of the virulent enterohaemorrhagic E.coli (EHEC) bacteria.

Last Tuesday, a Swedish man with no apparent connections to Germany was infected with the bacteria, marking the first domestic case in Sweden.

"All previous Swedish cases had a connection to Germany, but not this," said Sofie Ivarsson, epidemiologist at the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control (Smittskyddsinstitutet) to news agency TT at the time.

"This means that the source of the infection is in Sweden, which is a lot worse, because it might mean that there is some form of infected food product in circulation that we haven’t yet identified."
 

Tragic: 2-year-old dies in German E. coli sprout outbreak

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A two-year-old boy on Tuesday became the first child to die in an outbreak of E. coli O104 in Germany, taking the death toll to at least 37.

Some 3,255 people have also fallen sick in 14 European countries plus the United States and Canada, according to the World Health Organisation. Of those, 782 are seriously ill with hemolytic uremic syndrome.

The agricultural ministry in Lower Saxony said Sunday that it is still not clear how sprouts from a farm in the state became contaminated with the bacteria.

"It is not clear whether an employee brought the bacteria into the company or whether it was brought in with seeds which then contaminated the worker," the ministry said in a statement.
 

13 E. coli cases, 1 death in Tennessee, Virginia

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Reuters reports an outbreak of E.coli cases in northeastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia has sickened 13 people and resulted in the death of a young child, public health officials said on Friday.

Virginia has two confirmed cases of the E. coli strain O157:H7. Both Virginia cases affected children who had close contact with each other, and one of those children died, said Maureen Dempsey, a Virginia Public Health Department deputy chief.

Dempsey declined to confirm the age and sex of each of the children, but local media reported a 2-year-old girl from Dryden, Virginia, died on Sunday and her brother, who was also infected, was released from a hospital a few days later.

Northeastern Tennessee has 11 laboratory-confirmed cases of E.coli since June 1, said David Kirschke, medical director of the Northeast Tennessee Regional Health Office.

Three cases were O157:H7, and the remainder other strains in a category known as non-O157, he said. Kirschke said no link has been made between the Virginia and Tennessee cases.

"We’re not even sure if our cases are linked with each other," he said, adding the Tennessee O157:H7 strains also are being genetically fingerprinted to see if they are from a single source.

Still, Kirschke said health officials are treating the cases as an outbreak due to their large number, their close proximity and the short time frame of their appearance

"It seems too coincidental to have this many cases in a week," he said.

Always tragic:; 2-year-old dies in Virginia from E. coli O157:H7

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Lab results confirm the presence of E. coli O157:H7 in a two-year-old girl that died this weekend and the presence of the bacteria in a close contact of the child.

Northeast Regional Health Office Medical Director Dr. David Kirschke also confirms a similar severe strain in Northeast Tennessee.

"We have one case of the severe type in Tennessee," Dr. Kirschke said. "It may be similar to what the two kids from Virginia had."

According to a Washington County, TN Sheriff’s Office Coroner’s Report, the two year-old was brought to the medical center Pediatric Intensive Care Unit with bloody diarrhea after she was "believed to be exposed to E. coli from a contaminated pool."
 

German E. coli O104 update: 10 dead, 276 HUS, 1000 sick

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More women have died in Germany from an E. coli O104 outbreak linked to cucumbers grown in Spain, bringing the death toll to 10. Of the 1,000 or so sick, 276 have hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS).

Hospitals in the city of Hamburg, where more than 400 people are believed to have been infected, were said to be overwhelmed and sending patients to clinics elsewhere in the country.

Austria’s food safety agency ordered a recall of organically grown cucumbers, tomatoes and aubergines supplied by a Spanish producer which is thought to be the source of the outbreak. It said 33 Austrian stores were affected.

According to Denmark’s National Serum Institute, there are nine confirmed cases, with at least another eight people suspected of having the intestinal infection, also known as VTEC, in Denmark.

Sweden has reported 25 E. coli cases, of whom 10 developed HUS, according to the European Commission, while Britain counted three cases (two HUS).

Officials in the Czech Republic said the cucumbers may have been exported there, as well as to Austria, Hungary and Luxembourg.

"As long as the experts in Germany and Spain have not been able to name the source of the agent without any doubt, the general warning for vegetables still holds," German Agriculture and Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner said on Sunday in a report in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

The European Commission says experts are now probing two agricultural sites in southern Spain, in Almeria and Malaga, suspected of exporting products, most likely cucumbers, tainted with E. coli.

Blame Spain: Germans finger Spanish cucumbers as source of E. coli O104 outbreak

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German health officials identified imported cucumbers from Spain Thursday as the source of a two-week E. coli O104 outbreak that has killed at least four people and made more than 100 others ill.

Three of four contaminated cucumbers analyzed by the Hamburg Institute for Hygiene and the Environment came from Spain, said the state health minister for Hamburg, Cornelia Pruefer-Storcks.

Cucumbers from the affected producers have been pulled from shelves and officials have told people to stop eating cucumbers. The country of origin of the other cucumber is not yet known.