February 2006

By Tim Hrenchir
The Capital-Journal
February 1, 2006
State and local health officials are searching for the source of an outbreak that has resulted in four confirmed cases of hepatitis A this week in Shawnee County.
Katie Schurman, community relations specialist for the Shawnee County Health Agency, said the agency’s communicable disease team and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment on Tuesday were interviewing those who were infected and people who are close to them to try to find common activities or connections.
Schurman said hepatitis A is an infection that is transmitted through the oral-fecal route, which means that to be infected a person must have oral contact with something that — though it might look clean — is contaminated with the stool, or feces, of an infected person.Continue Reading County reports handful of hepatitis A cases

Food-borne illnesses, outbreaks are on the rise
By JANE ZHANG
The Wall Street Journal
01/31/2006
More Americans are eating their vegetables. But the healthy trend comes with a risk: Illnesses traced to fresh produce are on the rise.
Fruit and vegetables are now responsible for more large-scale outbreaks of food-borne illnesses than meat, poultry or eggs. Overall, produce accounts for 12 percent of food-borne illnesses and 6 percent of the outbreaks, up from 1 percent of the illnesses and 0.7 percent of outbreaks in the 1970s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Several factors are responsible: the centralization of produce distribution, a rise in produce imports, as well as the growing popularity of prechopped fruit and vegetables. Both the government and the industry have identified five products that are particularly problematic: tomatoes, melons (especially cantaloupes), lettuce, sprouts and green onions.Continue Reading Unwashed produce can make you sick

Angela Gonzales
The Business Journal
The Maricopa County Department of Public Health is linking a case of Hepatitis A to a Phoenix restaurant.
An employee of the Bamboo Grill restaurant at 3049 W. Agua Fria Freeway in Phoenix has been diagnosed with Hepatitis A. Now the county health department is investigating two other suspected cases among employees.
None of them are cooks and none have had direct contact with food, according to the county health department. It is unclear whether they were exposed to the disease by eating food together at the restaurant or elsewhere.Continue Reading County links Hepatitis A case to restaurant