BERLIN — The E coli outbreak centred in northern
Germany has spread to 11 other countries, the World Health Organization
said Friday, amid increasing concern over the new strain’s virulence.
The German government said a “European solution”
would be found to compensate vegetable growers and traders who have
suffered losses as consumers avoid raw vegetables and salads.
By Thursday, 1,122 cases of enterohaemorrhagic
Escherichia coli had been reported, while 502 cases of
haemolytic-uraemic syndrome, a form of kidney failure caused by this E
coli strain, had been reported, the WHO said.
In all but two of the cases, the patients lived in or had recently visited northern Germany.
But German authorities said Friday the number of cases of HUS in the country had increased to 520.
The outbreak has so far killed 18 people in Germany and one in Sweden. Most of the victims have been women.
MSNBC reported that a third .U.S resident who had
recently traveled to Germany had been hospitalized, citing officials at
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The cases, all of them of recent European travelers,
are being tested to determine if the infections are the same as those in
Europe.
Besides Germany, the countries affected are: Austria,
Czech Republic, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden,
Spain, Switzerland, Britain and the United States.
Though Spanish cucumbers were this week cleared of
blame for spreading the bug, described by Chinese researchers as a “new
super-toxic” bacterium, a German Consumer Ministry spokesman repeated
that consumers should avoid eating raw cucumbers, tomatoes and salad.
Hamburg, the north German city most affected, also defended its initial warnings against Spanish cucumbers.
“There was E coli bacteria on the cucumbers which had
the potential to make people ill,” a health authority spokesman said.
“Given the deaths and people seriously ill from EHEC, it was the right
decision.”
Spanish farmers have complained bitterly about their treatment by German authorities.
“We can’t sell anything any more,” said Miguel
Cazoria, who grew the cucumbers which were initially blamed for the
outbreak. He had traveled to Hamburg to voice his complaints to
authorities there.
“We have to harvest cucumbers and courgettes from the
fields and then destroy them,” he said. “We have the quality of our
products regularly examined by independent institutes.”
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel
said she and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero had
agreed that a “European solution” would be found to compensate growers
forced to discard entire crops.
On Thursday Zapatero criticized Germany’s and the
European Commission’s handling of the outbreak, pledging to seek damages
for the losses suffered by Spanish farmers.
Justice Minister Francisco Caamano said Germany would “probably” have to cover the cost of the damages paid to Spanish farmers.
In a telephone conversation with Zapatero late
Thursday, Merkel defended the actions of the German authorities, saying
the government had a duty to inform consumers.
In Russia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin defended his
country’s ban on vegetable imports from the European Union. “We won’t
poison out people,” he said. “Cucumbers which kill people are bad.”
The difficulties experienced by doctors in treating the rare infection was Friday also raising concerns.
“The severity of this strain has resulted in great
pressure on the health services,” said Winifred Kern of the University
Hospital in Freiburg.
In northern Germany, hospitals had “been experiencing
a problem with availability of intensive care beds due to the high
number of cases with life threatening complications,” he said.
Doctors also questioned Europe’s preparedness to deal with future outbreaks.
“This most recent E coli epidemic, of a strain
previously unseen in an outbreak, shows us yet again that new bacteria
and infections are just around the corner,” said Giuseppe Cornaglia,
president of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and
Infectious Diseases.
“The pan-European nature of this E coli outbreak …
reinforces the need for concerted cooperation across borders to tackle
not only this outbreak, but also future ones,” he said.
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(c) 2011, Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany).
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