United States: Cook Children’s Hospital in Texas is seeing more kids with salmonella which is a type of bacteria that causes stomach illness. Since July, the hospital’s Emergency Department has had a lot more cases than usual. Normally, they hereby see about 20 cases a month, but in the month of July, they had 43 cases, and the numbers went up even more in the following months: 59 in August, 71 in September, and 74 in October.
The Texas Department of State Health Services who are hasn’t said it’s an outbreak yet, but health officials are almost keeping an eye on it.
Both Cook Children’s pediatricians Devona Martin, M.D., and Jenica Rose-Stine, D.O., have confirmed experiencing an increase in patients of the primary care clinic in Willow Park, Texas.
As reported by foodsafetynews, “The number of cases of this sickening bacterium has been on the rise over the past few months,” Martin said. “This usually presents as diarrhea that has blood or mucus and fever. That is, each case is notified to the Health Department in an attempt to search for a source but none has been found so far.”
In the current week at Cook Children’s, 11 out of 229 patients who went through testing for Salmonella were positive making it 5percent positivity rate.
About Salmonella infections
Salmonella bacteria are not easily detected because foods that are contaminated with it are not visibly, noticeably spoiled. Salmonella illness can happen to anyone at any time. The CDC indicate that people with weak immune systems including, infants, kids, seniors, and individuals infected with other sicknesses are vulnerable serious health complications because their immunity is low.
Any person who has symptoms of developing Salmonella infection should consult a doctor. Patients suffering from the diseases should inform their physician of the likelihood to have been exposed to Salmonella bacteria because specific procedures are needed for confirming salmonellosis.
People with salmonella poisoning experience symptoms, which are similar to those of other diseases, thus proper diagnosis of the disease is often erroneous. Most patients present symptoms of diarrhea, abdominal pain and fever within 12-72 hours of ingesting food contaminated with salmonella.
Nevertheless, otherwise, healthy adults fall ill for not more than four to seven days. Sometimes people, however, will experience diarrhea severe enough that they need to be hospitalized.
In weak immunity people like elderly, children, pregnant women, and people who have an organ disease or cancer, are at a higher risk of getting severe illness and complications that could be fatal.
Then there are some who come into contact with the virus and do not fall ill or display the illness. But they may transmit the infections to others around them.