May 2005

The Daily Mail reports that British tour operators Thomas Cook and Thomson are facing lawsuits after sending tourists to Club Hotel Riu Mambo, Riu Merengue and Riu Bachata, where hundreds fell ill – hotels to which American and Canadian companies had ceased sending tourists.
British tourists infected with the virus ended up on intravenous drips

It’s not just petting zoos that can make kids sick. Some pets are proving risky too.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that “pocket pets” such as hamsters, mice and rats have infected 30 people – mostly children – in 10 states with a dangerous multidrug-resistant form of salmonella

Public-health officials are investigating an E. coli outbreak that struck several people who attended a Yamhill County Christian camp gathering last week.
The bacteria apparently struck teenage and adult campgoers at Camp Yamhill. The camp is about eight miles west of Yamhill. The outbreak appeared to affect people taking part in the camp’s Christian Outdoor

Experts say following a few precautions can keep food poisoning from being an uninvited guest at your summer picnics and cookouts. Food-borne illnesses such as salmonella and E. coli sicken about 76 million Americans a year. The great majority of those cases are mild, but about 5,000 people die every year.

“This time of year,

Tracy Wheeler, Beacon Journal medical writer, reports that recent federal study covering 1990 to 2000 blamed petting zoos and fairs in more than two dozen outbreaks of Escherichia coli O157:H7 which can cause severe diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and in about 2 percent to 7 percent of cases, life-threatening kidney complications.
The U.S. Centers for Disease

The Allen County Department of Health has no business shielding the location of a small, local day-care center where nine children have been stricken with a deadly strain of E. coli bacteria.
The department’s interpretation of a state law meant to protect people goes well beyond the reasonable intentions of the statute. The department has offered bits and pieces of information, an approach that has only brought on more questions rather than delivered answers.
The county health department said Indiana law forbids it to reveal the name and location of the day-care center, as well as the names of the children, according to Mindy Waldron, a department spokesperson. Waldron said the county consulted the Indiana State Department of Health in interpreting the law, which prohibits, except under extreme circumstances, public disclosure of “medical or epidemiological information involving a communicable disease or other disease that is a danger to health.”Continue Reading E. coli requires disclosure

The News Journal reports that new cases of the potentially deadly E. coli infection have been reported in Central Florida since the Department of Health confirmed or suspected 68 people statewide, but the families and business affected by the outbreak, caused by animals from AgVenture Farm Shows, may never fully recover.
Port Orange resident Ava