Trip Tip a Day

Breakthrough?  Sprouts have been in, then out, now in again as the possible source for the E. coli outbreak in Europe.  4 Interesting snippets in the news today: Glossary - EHEC - Enterohemorrhagic E. coli                STEC - Shiga toxin producing E. coli                Spiegel Online and WHO call it EHEC, the CDC is calling it STEC.                  HUS - Hemolytic uremic syndrome (involves the kidney failure)                 1)  Scientists 'Find EHEC Bacteria at Sprout Farm' from Spiegel International Online: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,767935,00.html    6/10/2011 "Health authorities in Germany have finally been able to show that the pathogens which caused the deadly EHEC outbreak came from sprouts at an organic farm in the Uelzen district. According to SPI...

June 7, 2011 Germany's terrific scientists at the Robert Koch Institute appear hampered by a bureaucratic maze that does not exist in health care crisis management in the USA. Der Spiegel Online states "The country (Germany), they say, is surprisingly ill-equipped to handle outbreaks on this scale because of its complex bureaucratic structures and regionally fragmented division of responsibilities. Experts say Germany's alert system is  rudimentary compared to those in other developed nations. " http://www.rki.de/cln_144/nn_217400/EN/Home/EHEC__O104__H4,templateId=raw,property=publicationFile.pdf/EHEC_O104_H4.pdf "While news of a potentially deadly outbreak can take up to two weeks to reach top German health authorities, other developed nations such as the United States and Japan, have instituted early warning mechanisms." http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,766969,00.html CDC updates statement: http://www.cdc.gov...