E.coli in kills another victim
In the USA, the E.coli outbreak in Spinach has claims its 4th victim on Friday 26th January. With evidence linking a death back in September the death toll could rise to 5.
The latest victim is 83 year old Elizabeth, “Betty” Howard of Richland, Wash., who died Friday of heart failure in a rehabilitation facility after close to a five month long battle with E. coli O157:H7, her son Darryl Howard said.
The other victim was June Dunning, 86, of Hagerstown, Md., who died in September 13, said Warren Swartz, Dunning’s son-in-law. She tested positive for E. coli O157:H7 at the hospital. But because the Maryland Dept. of Health lost culture samples from her illness, the state was unable to confirm the cause of her illness so she had not been officially included in the death toll.
However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed in a letter to Dunning’s family Thursday that microbiological tests on the two bags of spinach in her refrigerator were positive for a closely related and potentially fatal form of the bacteria, E. Coli 0146:H21.
The letter from Cheryl Bopp at CDC’s division of Food borne Diseases states that the E. coli strain found in Dunning’s spinach was “indistinguishable” from that found in a sample of spinach from Illinois “which also yielded the outbreak strain of E. coli O157:H7.”
In October Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, had sent a public letter to the CDC asking that Dunning be included in the death toll because of the strong circumstances linking her death to the others.
The outbreak was traced to pre-washed, bagged spinach from processor Natural Selection Foods of San Juan Bautista, Calif., sold by Dole. It sickened 199 people in 26 states, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Howard became ill after eating a turkey sandwich with spinach on it. She had been living independently in her own home until she became ill with the O157:H7 strain of the virus. She went into the hospital on Sept. 7 several days after eating the sandwich and never returned home.
“E. coli is like running the blood through razor blades. It devastates every part of the body,” her son said. He said his mother worked for years as a secretary at the Department of Energy’s Hanford (Wash) Nuclear site.
Howard’s medical bills in the rehabilitation center where she died were paid for by the Dole company’s insurer, her lawyer, William Marler said.
Dunning became ill after eating spinach salad on August 28 of last year. On September 2nd she was hit with “horrible, bloody liquid diarrhea,” Swartz said. She went into the hospital and never came home.
On September 6 doctors told the family that they’d gotten results back from the stool sample they’d taken when Dunning first entered the hospital and that she had E. coli O157:H7.
“We said ‘What’s that? It sounds like something from Mars,” Swartz said. “The doctor said ‘It’s very rare and in over 30 years of practice I’ve never seen it.’ “The infectious disease doctor told them that it came from hamburger.
“We said she doesn’t eat hamburger, she loves vegetables,” Swartz said.
Dunning fell into a coma that evening and died on Sept. 13.
Born in Catford, England, she married an American and moved to the United States after the end of her husband’s 20-year-career in the U.S Army, her son-in-law said.
After her death, Swartz looked up E. coli on the Internet and realized that there was a nationwide outbreak associated with spinach. In their refrigerator Swartz found a half-eaten bag of pre-washed Dole baby spinach with the same use-by date and lot number implicated in the outbreak.
He and his wife Corinne turned the bags over to the Maryland Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene, which passed them along to the CDC, he said.
Other deaths related to the outbreak include Ruby Trautz, 81, of Omaha, Kyle Allgood, 2, of Chubbuck, Idaho, and Marion Graff, 77, of Manitowoc, Wisc.
