The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) has announced that samples from 4 of 10 areas tested at the Whatcom County fairgrounds implicated in an outbreak of Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157:H7 that began sickening people last month matched the outbreak strain, according to a May 22 update.
E coli and some Salmonella infections dropped, but Campylobacter and Vibrio cases increased.
Veterinary officials in Burkina Faso and Turkey reported more highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu outbreaks, as their counterparts in Taiwan reported that highly pathogenic H5N2 has struck 10 more locations, according to separate reports to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).
The World Health Organization (WHO) said today that it and partner groups working on earthquake response in Nepal are deploying extra medications and equipment to prevent the spread of diarrheal diseases such as cholera, which can spread when disasters damage and contaminate the clean water supply.
Groups estimate that at least 2.8 million people have been displaced, with many living in 16 makeshift camps.
Health officials in Ohio have confirmed botulism as the illness that sickened several people and killed one who attended the same church lunch in Lancaster, Ohio, on Apr 19, the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette reported on Apr 25.
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has detected 12 cases of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infection in four provinces that might be linked to leafy greens, the agency said in a statement yesterday.
Nearly 600 million cases of foodborne enteric disease, with 351,000 deaths, occurred worldwide in 2010, 40% of them in young children, a World Health Organization (WHO) research group noted today as it released early findings of a broad analysis of the global burden of the diseases. The full report is planned for release in October.
US agencies reported on what they billed as an improved method for sifting food outbreak data.
The world is "dangerously unpreprepared" for future pandemics, and a private-public sector proposal that includes a pandemic facility and insurance coverage could help countries across the globe mitigate the risk, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said today in a speech at Georgetown University.
The number of disease outbreaks linked to the drinking of unpasteurized milk has risen at an alarming rate, quadrupling from the period 1993-2006 to 2007-12, as more states allow the legal sale of raw milk, according to a study today in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
