Hepatitis A Lawyer & Attorney : Marler Clark : Hepatitis A Blog

8/24/2005
Bill Vidonic, Times Staff

BEAVER - The widow of a man whose family says he died after contracting hepatitis A in the Chi-Chi's outbreak has sued the defunct restaurant chain and several produce suppliers.

With the lawsuit Tuesday from Marilyn Greathouse of Daugherty Township, representing the estate of her husband, Harvey Greathouse, there are six cases pending against Chi-Chi's in county court.

Greathouse's suit names the restaurant chain, along with four companies that supplied green onions and other produce to Chi-Chi's: Castellini Co., Kentucky; New Star Fresh Foods, California; APIO Fresh, California; and Boskovich Farms, California.

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Kashish Gupta

Friday, August 19, 2005 (New Delhi):

The monsoon does have some undesirable effects.

Wards in various hospitals in the Capital are overflowing with patients suffering from with viral infections.

Doctors say this is not unusual during the monsoons. Every year during this period, there is a surge in viral diseases such as dengue, hepatitis A and conjunctivitis.

Significant rise

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Express News Service

Mumbai, August 18: The dreaded Hepatitis virus claimed its first victims on Thursday. According to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, two people died of Hepatitis--the virus causes an inflammation in the liver that could lead to liver failure and death--on Thursday.

From July 29 to August 18 (until 8 am), 270 cases of Hepatitis were recorded, but no casualties until Thursday.

ëëPost-floods, the two main types of Hepatitis we have to look out for are A and E as they are water borne,'' said Dr Rajesh Sainani, a gastroenterologist at L H Hiranandani Hospital, Powai.

ëëBut both have a low mortality rate,'' he said, ëëand death could be caused if the patient has a pre-existing liver problem like cirrhosis of the liver.''

Meanwhile, with 15 deaths reported in Mumbai and 5 in Thane on Thursday, the toll of people dying of flood-related ailments has risen to 284.

Doctors also pointed out that as death due to Hepatitis implies liver failure, it could be caused due to illnesses like malaria, typhoid, leptospirosis or dengue.

ëëIn many cases, these diseases affect the liver,'' said Dr Rohit Burman, a gastroenterologist at Breach Candy Hospital. ëëWhen patients who already have a weak liver get infected with the Hepatitis virus, it could have far more serious consequences.''

The virus

Hepatitis A and E are water borne and are spread by eating contaminated food or water. The incubation period is three to six weeks
Symptoms: Fatigue, nausea, vomiting, fever, chills, jaundice, pain in liver area, dark urine
Prevention: Wash hands with soap after using the bathroom and before preparing or eating food, drink boiled water, avoid raw food

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Jacksboro, Campbell County (WVLT) - There are four new cases of Hepatitis-A stemming from the outbreak in Campbell County.

The health department confirms 27 cases. 25 of them are residents from Campbell County, one is from Scott and one is from Cocke County.

In all, 15 of the cases of Hepatitis-A are adults and 12 are in children.

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With 16 cases confirmed in the past month, health officials announced Tuesday that a "communitywide outbreak" of hepatitis A in Campbell County is requiring "intense efforts" to stop the spread.

The confirmation of "several" cases in children is particularly concerning, said Dr. Paul Erwin, director of the East Tennessee Regional Health Office. Children often don't show symptoms when infected with hepatitis A but can still spread the virus to others. Officials haven't identified a source for the outbreak.

On Thursday the Campbell County Health Department and ETHRO will give hepatitis A vaccinations to all workers and children 2 and older in Campbell County's six day-care centers. So far, only one of the confirmed cases is a day-care worker, Erwin said, "but day cares can be a place where hepatitis A can come in and go out (into the community) very quickly."

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August, 2005
Journal of Food Protection: Volume 68, Number 8
Page 1748-1751

David H. Kingsley,a Dongsheng Guan,b and Dallas G. Hoover, b

aU.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Microbial Food Safety Research Unit, James W. W. Baker Center, Delaware State University, Dover, Delaware 19901

bDepartment of Animal and Food Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716-2150, USA

ABSTRACT

Hepatitis A can be acquired by ingesting contaminated produce. To investigate the potential of high-pressure processing as an intervention strategy for virus in produce, strawberry puree and sliced green onions were inoculated with 106 PFU of hepatitis A virus and treated with pressures ranging from 225 to 375 megapascals (MPa) in 25-MPa increments at ambient temperature. Subsequent virus extraction and plaque assay determined that hepatitis A virus was inactivated in strawberry puree and sliced green onions after 5-min exposures to pressures of 375 MPa with log PFU reductions of 4.32 and 4.75, respectively. Hepatitis A virus was equally sensitive in puree and onions at pressures 350 MPa. For treatments of <325 MPa, the virus was more sensitive to pressure in strawberry puree than in sliced onions with log reductions of 1.2, 2.06, and 3.13 observed for strawberries and 0.28, 0.72, and 1.42 observed for onions after 5-min treatments at 250, 275, and 300 MPa, respectively. Although high-pressure processing may cause some organoleptic alterations to strawberries and onions, results show high-pressure processing will inactivate hepatitis A virus in these foods.

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August 8, 2005
WVLT

Jacksboro, Campbell County - School in Campbell County is just a week from being in full swing and with the recent outbreak of Hepatitis-A in the community, school administrators were cited as saying calls of concern have been pouring in from both parents and teachers.

That's wh, the story says, every teacher in the county met Monday to get a lesson in Hepatits-A. Officials from the health department discussed what it is, how it's passed along and most importantly how to keep it from spreading in the classroom.

School officials say they also have unique plans on how they will implement learning about the virus into their curriculum.

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Hepatitis-A Outbreak

Jacksboro, Campbell County (WVLT) - School in Campbell County is just a week from being in full swing and with the recent outbreak of Hepatitis-A in the community, school administrators say calls of concern have been pouring in from both parents and teachers.

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Kathmandu, 7 August: About 3,000 people, out of 20,000 people affected with food and water-borne diseases, die in last year in Nepal, an official at Epidemiology and Disease Control Division (EDCD) said here Sunday [7 August]. "About 20,000 persons are affected by food and water-borne diseases with around 3,000 dying last year in Nepal," Mahendra Bahadur Bista, director of EDCD, told reporters.

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8/5/2005, 5:21 p.m. ET
By JOE MANDAK
The Associated Press

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- More than 9,000 people who received shots to ward off hepatitis A after an outbreak at a Chi-Chi's restaurant will be mailed forms later this month so they can claim their share of an $800,000 class-action settlement.

The federal judge overseeing Chi-Chi's bankruptcy last month approved a schedule to mail the notices by Aug. 24 to the 9,489 people who got immune globulin shots from the Pennsylvania Department of Health after the outbreak was publicized in early November 2003.

More than 600 people were sickened, and four eventually died, from eating tainted green onions served at the Beaver County Chi-Chi's. Health officials urged shots for family members of people who became ill, as well as those who ate in the restaurant in the weeks leading up to the outbreak.

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By KRISTI L. NELSON, nelsonk@knews.com
August 4, 2005

Health officials have confirmed two new cases of hepatitis A in the region: one in Campbell County, where 15 other cases have been confirmed, and the other in Cocke County.
Counting a case in Scott County, 18 cases have now been confirmed in what health officials last week labeled an "outbreak."

The Cocke County case was the first in that area. During interviews, however, health officials tentatively tied the Cocke County case to some others in Campbell County, said Sandy Halford, registered nurse in communicable disease control for East Tennessee Regional Health Office. Because of this, Halford added, "we're not concerned that we're seeing a new outbreak in Cocke County."

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Vaccination programs have helped take the state's disease rate from one of the 17 worst to near the U.S. average

By Carey Hamilton

The Salt Lake Tribune

08/01/2005

From 1987 to 1997, Utah - for reasons unknown - had the dubious distinction of being one of 17 states with the highest rate of hepatitis A infections.

However, the number of cases has since declined steadily in all the high-risk states, thanks in large part to a vaccination program targeting children, according to a recent report in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

The hepatitis A vaccine was licensed in 1995 for use in people older than 2 years. It has been required for school entry in Utah since 1999.

Reported cases in Utah decreased from 3.2 cases per 100,000 people in 2000 to 1.7 cases per 100,000 people in 2003. The cases reached a peak of 1,073 overall for all age groups in 1996 and dropped to their lowest at 36 in 2004. People 19 to 39 years old were affected the most in 1996, with 533 illnesses reported. That age group had only 13 cases in 2004.

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WVLT - Knoxville

Jacksboro, Campbell County (WVLT) - Two more cases of Hepatitis-A show up in East Tennessee over the weekend.

There are now 18-confirmed cases in Campbell and Scott counties.

The two latest cases are both in adults in Campbell County.

Health workers say it appears they are connected to the outbreak.

The Health Department says we may see "dozens more" cases of the virus by the time things naturally slow down in a couple of months.

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But parents say opting not to have children get shots is a control issue

By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE
Houston Chronicle
July 31, 2005, 8:23PM

Thousands of parents across the state are exempting their children from required school vaccines, despite concerns that Texas is one of the most poorly immunized states in the nation.

The state health department has mailed 36,993 affidavits to roughly 11,400 people interested in claiming the "conscientious objection," created by the Legislature two years ago to give parents more flexibility to refuse shots.

Though some parents applaud the law, medical experts fear that Texas -- and the 17 other states that allow such broad philosophical exemptions -- are sending the wrong message. Without the shots, they say, potentially fatal diseases such as measles and whooping cough could make a comeback.

"In the area of public health, we typically have rules," said Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "This replaces medical correctness with political correctness."

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