Hepatitis Blog - Surveillance & analysis on hepatitis news & outbreaks

The Patriot News
Monday, November 28, 2005

It's great that the state plans to put the results of restaurant in spections online by the first of the year, but that only addresses part of a much larger problem.

The laws involving health inspections are antiquated and the combined state-local inspection system uneven. Something must be done. Having nearly 23 percent of licenses renewed without inspections, and some known violators remaining open is a public health crisis waiting to happen.

Those were among the findings of a study by the state auditor general's office prompted by a hepatitis A outbreak at a western Pennsylvania restaurant in 2003. In addition to finding that 4,000 of the state's 17,597 restaurants, clubs, bars and retail stores got relicensed despite not being inspected in two years, the report also found that inspectors rarely sought fines and did not suspend or revoke any licenses during the two-year period; useful information about unsanitary eating places was not readily available to the public; and there is poor coordination among the state Agriculture Department, which has oversight, and the 206 municipalities that do their own inspections.

November 21, 2005

Most people properly associate Salmonella with raw poultry. But according to an analysis of food-poisoning outbreaks by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), fresh produce is catching up with chicken as a major culprit of Salmonella infections. And, says CSPI, produce-related outbreaks tend to be larger than poultry-related outbreaks, and sicken more people, sometimes hundreds at a time.

In CSPI's Outbreak Alert! database, which contains information on nearly 4,500 outbreaks between 1990 and 2003, produce triggered 554 outbreaks, sickening 28,315 people. Of those 554 outbreaks, 111 were due to Salmonella.

Pittsburgh Tribune Review
By staff and wire reports
Friday, November 18, 2005

Thousands of Pennsylvania restaurants have been licensed in recent years without the required annual inspections for sanitation and health, according to a new state audit prompted by a deadly outbreak of hepatitis A at a Beaver County restaurant in 2003.

The state's Department of Agriculture is responsible for overseeing restaurant sanitation in all but six of the state's 67 counties. The audit found the department renewed the licenses of about 4,000 of more than 17,000 restaurants, bars and retail food purveyors even though they had not been inspected for at least two years.

In Allegheny County, the county health department is responsible for restaurant inspections. All restaurants in the county are inspected at least once a year, and no food distributor is licensed without an inspection, a county official said Thursday. Allegheny County was not included in the audit.

By Marc Fortier
Staff writer
November 16, 2005

BEVERLY -- On the same day that administrators were urging Briscoe Middle School students to wash their hands to prevent the spread of hepatitis A, some bathrooms at the school had no hot water, no soap and no paper towels.

Most of the school bathrooms have never had hot water; they're not hooked up to the boiler. As for the soap and paper towels, Superintendent Jim Hayes said someone neglected to refill empty dispensers on Monday. They have since been refilled.

The situation came to light after Hayes sent a letter home to parents on Monday informing them of three confirmed cases of hepatitis A at the school in the past month. Most people who get the disease experience severe flu-like symptoms that pass in one to two weeks. It is rarely fatal.

11/11/2005
By Crystal C. Bozek
Sentinel & Enterprise

LEOMINSTER -- State officials have confirmed that a Johnny Appleseed School employee was diagnosed with a case of Hepatitis A.

But local health officials insist children and faculty are at a very minimal risk of catching the virus.

Hepatitis A, which has symptoms similar to the flu in children, is a contagious viral disease that makes the liver swell.

"We had someone who got ill. ... We have a confined case," Health Director Christopher Knuth said. "If we thought there was a risk to children, we'd be immunizing all of them."