Tag Archives: Hospital

Listeria in sandwich cold-cuts killed 8, sickened 20 over past 10 years in UK hospitals

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Who are these dieticians in hospitals or aged facilities that keep feeding cold-cuts to the vulnerable? Do they have any food safety training? Didn’t they hear about the 23 elderly who were killed by Maple Leaf cold-cuts in Canada in 2008? Are they like the rest of us and ignore bland messages that state, refrigerated ready-to-eat foods like cold-cuts shouldn’t be consumed by immunocompromised people like the elderly or pregnant? How hard is it to heat the meat?

The UK Sun reports hospital sandwiches were yesterday revealed to have killed eight patients.

Watchdogs yesterday demanded a crackdown on shoddy handling of food after the grim toll over the past ten years was disclosed by the Health Protection Agency.

Twenty others were also poisoned by listeria but survived.

Sarnies were found to account for almost three quarters of outbreaks in hospitals — with the bug found in ham salad, sliced sausage, tuna, cheese and prawn mayo varieties.

Almost all were pre-packed by commercial firms — but at some stage had not been kept below 5°C.

Half of those hit were cancer patients weakened by chemotherapy treatment — leaving them less able to fight off the deadly bug.

The HPA warned: “Vulnerable patients and pregnant women can develop severe illness after ingesting levels that would not have an effect on other individuals. This suggests catering and ward staff are not aware of the importance of temperature control, or that proper methods of refrigeration were not used.”

3 dead, 51 sick; Clostridium perfringens illness at a state psychiatric hospital — Louisiana, 2010

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On May 7, 2010, 42 residents and 12 staff members at a Louisiana state psychiatric hospital experienced vomiting, abdominal cramps, and diarrhea. Within 24 hours, three patients had died. The three fatalities occurred among patients aged 41–61 years who were receiving medications that had anti–intestinal motility side effects. For two of three decedents, the cause of death found on postmortem examination was necrotizing colitis. Investigation by the Louisiana Office of Public Health (OPH) and CDC found that eating chicken served at dinner on May 6 was associated with illness. The chicken was cooked approximately 24 hours before serving and not cooled in accordance with hospital guidelines. C. perfringens enterotoxin (CPE) was detected in 20 of 23 stool specimens from ill residents and staff members. Genetic testing of C. perfringens toxins isolated from chicken and stool specimens was carried out to determine which of the two strains responsible for C. perfringens foodborne illness was present. The specimens tested negative for the beta-toxin gene, excluding C. perfringens type C as the etiologic agent and implicating C. perfringens type A. This outbreak underscores the need for strict food preparation guidelines at psychiatric inpatient facilities and the potential risk for adverse outcomes among any patients with impaired intestinal motility caused by medications, disease, and extremes of age when exposed to C. perfringens enterotoxin.

Clostridium perfringens, the third most common cause of foodborne illness in the U.S., most often causes a self-limited, diarrheal disease lasting 12–24 hours. Fatalities are very rare, occurring in <0.03% of cases. Death usually is caused by dehydration and occurs among the very young, the very old, and persons debilitated by illness.

The full report is available from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6132a1.htm?s_cid=mm6132a1_x.

Stomach bug hits NZ health facilities

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Just days after a deadly listeria outbreak in a New Zealand hospital was made public, some 40 patients at three health facilities supplied by North Shore Hospital’s kitchen have been hit by a stomach infection.

The outbreak was not related to the listeria outbreak reported in Hawkes Bay last week.

Errol Kiong a spokesman for North Shore Hospital, told the New Zealand Herald that Auckland Regional Public Health Service staff were trying to identify the reason for the outbreak, adding, "We think it may be related to food somehow. We don’t have any confirmation on that. The reason we think it’s food is because the supply chain for all three areas is from the same place. The food is prepared at North Shore Hospital."

Cold cuts again; 2 dead, 2 sick in NZ Listeria outbreak

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Two people have died and two others sickened in a listeria outbreak linked to hospital food in New Zealand.

The two elderly women died after contracting listeria found in meat supplied to the Hawkes Bay Hospital.

Hawke’s Bay Today reports the cause of the women’s deaths – in June and this month – were reported a day after the recall notices were placed in newspapers by Napier company Bay Cuisine.

The company supplies the hospital’s kitchen and cafeteria, and the Mad Butcher and Preston shop chains.

The products included Mad Butcher 500g salami and pepperoni rolls.

The products, as well as Ratanui Hams and EZY Carve boneless leg ham, are sold in Mad Butcher and Preston stores in Wellington, Porirua and Palmerston North.

Four patients with listeria went to the Hastings hospital between May and June but the Hawkes Bay District Health Board said it was still unclear if they had contracted the illness while in its care.

However, it could not completely rule out the possibility.

Listeria outbreak leads to warning over hospital sandwiches

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Almost a month after an elderly patient died in a Northern Ireland hospital and three others were sickened from Listeria, health trusts have been advised to stop serving sandwiches from a specific food company.

Following the outbreak, the trust carried out a review of food supplier and distribution chains with the Food Standards Agency and Environmental Health.

Health Minister Edwin Poots said preliminary results of tests on sandwiches provided to inpatients indicated low levels of listeria were present although he stressed these were within the legal limits.

In response to an Assembly question on the matter, he said: “As a precautionary measure the Northern Trust decided not to serve sandwiches from a particular supplier until investigations have been completed.

In 2008, three patients died during a listeria outbreak at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.

Also in 2008, 23 people – primarily elderly – died from Listeria in Maple Leaf deli meats in Canada. Maybe the sandwiches could be heated?

Pensioner dies in N. Ireland listeria outbreak

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Maybe the meal-planner geniuses decided it would be OK to give sick old folks cold-cuts or deli meat to eat. That’s part of what happened in Canada in 2008 when 23 people – elderly with pre-existing medical conditions, many already in institutions — died from listeria-laden Maple Leaf deli meats.

Yesterday, an elderly patient died in an outbreak of listeria in two Northern Ireland hospitals.

The pensioner was one of two patients in the Antrim Area Hospital that contracted the foodborne bacteria. Another acquired the bug in the Causeway Hospital on the region’s north coast.

The patient who died was already ill but listeria has been confirmed as a contributory cause of death.

Both hospitals are managed by the Northern Trust, which has declared an outbreak.

Fistbump, forehead cuddle, just don’t shake hands at Olympics; handwashing sucks at Australian hospitals, and elsewhere

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British athletes are being told not to shake hands at the 2012 Olympics in London, a good idea considering that one-in-five hospitals – hospitals with sick people where everyone is supposed to religiously wash hands – in Australia suck at handwashing.

The Australian government on Tuesday released data on the MyHospitals website about how often staff at 233 public hospitals clean their hands, against an interim benchmark of 70 per cent.

It is the first time such information has been made publicly available.

The figures show that about half of the country’s major public hospitals are above the benchmark, while just over 30 per cent were similar to the current standard.

Around 19 per cent were below the benchmark.

The data are based on audits of hand hygiene moments – when there is a perceived or actual risk of pathogen transmission from one surface to another via someone’s hands – in public hospitals between July and October last year.

Meanwhile, Dr Ian McCurdie, the British Olympic Association (BOA) chief medical officer, told the Daily Mail that a mild bug which can knock athletes off their stride could be picked up in the "quite stressful environment" of the Games.

When asked whether this means shaking hands should be off-limits, he said, “I think, within reason, yes.

“I think that is not such a bad thing to advise. The difficulty is when you have got some reception and you have got a line of about 20 people you have never met before who you have got to shake hands with.

‘Within reason if you do and have to shake hands with people, so long as you understand that regular handwashing and/or also using hand foam can help reduce the risk – that would be a good point.’”

The advice is part of a detailed package of health and resilience issues which the BOA has looked at ahead of the Games.

Not just at Playboy mansion: beware the Legionnaires’ in hospital water fountains

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Back when I thought going to conferences was important or at least a family diversion, my kids would rank the success of the trip based on the hotel water fountain.

A long-ago meeting of the International Food Protection Association in Orlando ranked particularly high.

A 2010 outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in Wisconsin has been linked to a decorative fountain in a hospital lobby, according to a study published in the February issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.

When the outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease was detected among eight people in southeast Wisconsin, state and local public health officials worked closely with hospital staff to launch an investigation to determine the source of the outbreak.

Through detailed interviews with patients, officials identified one hospital as the site of the contamination. Subsequent environmental testing within the hospital detected notable amounts of Legionella in samples collected from the "water wall" decorative fountain located in the hospital’s main lobby.

The investigation revealed that all eight patients had spent time in the main lobby where the fountain is located. This, along with the proximity of each patient’s onset of illness and the degree of Legionella contamination in the fountain strongly support the conclusion that the decorative fountain was the source of the outbreak. Hospital officials quickly shut down the fountain when it was first suspected as a source, and notified staff and approximately 4,000 potentially exposed patients and visitors. Prior to the investigation, the decorative fountain underwent routine cleaning and maintenance.

All eight patients in the Wisconsin outbreak recovered from the disease, and no cases occurred following the shutdown of the fountain.

The outbreak is notable since none of the patients with Legionnaires’ disease was an inpatient at the hospital when exposed. And some patients reported only incidental exposure to the fountain, such as delivering a package or visiting the hospital pharmacy.

At the time of the outbreak there was no published information on the effectiveness of fountain disinfection and maintenance procedures to reduce the risks of Legionella contamination.

"Since our investigation, the Wisconsin Division of Public Health has developed interim guidelines advising healthcare facilities with decorative fountains to establish strict maintenance procedures and conduct periodic bacteriologic monitoring for Legionella," said Thomas E. Haupt, MS, an epidemiologist with the Wisconsin Division of Public Health and the study’s lead author. "The guidelines stress that until additional data are available that demonstrate effective maintenance procedures for eliminating the risk of Legionella transmission from indoor decorative water fountains in healthcare settings, water fountains of any type should be considered at risk of becoming contaminated with Legionella bacteria."

Since this investigation, many healthcare facilities in Wisconsin shut down or removed decorative fountains in their facilities, while others enhanced their regular testing protocols to reduce the risk of Legionnaires’ disease, the researchers report. Healthcare facility construction guidelines published after this outbreak stipulate that, "fountains and other open decorative water features may represent a reservoir for opportunistic human pathogens; thus they are not recommended for installation within any enclosed spaces in healthcare facilities."

More training? Do more of same thing expecting different results crazy; Ottawa hospital cited for food-safety violations

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Public Heath found seven “critical” food-safety deficiencies at the Ottawa General Hospital this year, three of them in the last week.

On both Monday and Wednesday this week, inspectors found the hospital failed to “separate raw foods from ready-to-eat foods during storage and handling.”

The hospital also earned a critical deficiency for not having paper towels in a dispenser at a hand basin in the food-preparation area on Monday this week and on Aug. 19 of this year. On April 15, the citation was for having no soap in the dispenser at the washing station.

Frances Furmankiewicz, director of nutrition for the hospital, said the latest problems were due to “employee error.” Though all the employees are trained and certified to handle food, they were given more training as a result of the inspections.

A number of people at the hospital Thursday said they were concerned when they learned about the poor inspection results and said they would no longer eat there, including Cindy Gilman, who was at the hospital to pick up her daughter.

“I thought the hospital would have been great at following regulations — it’s a hospital,” she said.

Hospital handwashing compliance with video: the video; increases meat safety too

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This is a CBS News video of the Arrowsight handwashing video monitoring system that has been used to dramatically increase handwashing compliance rates at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y.

The same system is now being widely used by meat companies in an effort to reduce E. coli and other contamination inside processing plants.

According to a Wall Street Journal article earlier this month, the new technique allows remote auditors to watch whether plant workers follow safety protocols aimed at reducing the spread of deadly bacteria.

JBS SA, the world’s largest beef processor, saw a 60% drop in the level of E. coli found by company inspectors after it installed monitoring cameras, said John Ruby, head of technical services for the company’s beef division. The Brazilian meat processor started with a pilot program after it recalled 380,000 pounds of beef that sickened 23 people in nine states in 2009.

A trial run at its Souderton, Pa., plant showed an immediate improvement in results, so the company placed cameras in all eight of its U.S. plants.

"We are seeing increased interest among meat companies in remote video auditing as part of their food safety and animal welfare programs," said J. Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute, which represents most beef and pork packing companies. "Those who have implemented these programs have reported very good results."

Cargill Inc., another major U.S. beef producer, uses video cameras to make sure its cattle are treated humanely before they are slaughtered. The Minneapolis-based company is now considering an expansion to monitor for food safety in its pork and turkey operations, according to Mike Siemens, head of the company’s animal welfare division.

Aurora, Ill.-based OSI Group LLC., a meat processor, for several years has used video cameras to monitor employees in three of its five U.S. plants for general food-safety practices. The company, which supplies McDonald’s and other companies with bacon, sausage and chicken, decided in June to expand the monitoring to its other two plants.

After the JBS results, the Agriculture Department—the government agency responsible for overseeing the safety of the U.S. meat supply—in August released voluntary guidelines for video monitoring at meat companies.

In some cases, companies are watching to see if sloppy work is allowing meat contamination. They are also using the cameras to make sure employees aren’t mistakenly sending the expensive cuts into hamburger grinders.

Arrowsight has two facilities—one in Huntsville, Ala., and one in Visakhapatnam, India—employing 50 people to monitor meat-cutting operations. The company was wary about using workers in India, where parts of the country outlaw cattle slaughter, to monitor beef production.

But it hasn’t had problems with that, Mr. Aronson said. Arrowsight routes the most graphic slaughter video to its staff in Huntsville, he said.