Officials: Intestinal infection has struck hundreds in city
A highly contagious intestinal infection has sickened hundreds of people in the last five months, city health officials said yesterday in an advisory that encouraged vigilant hand-washing.
A highly contagious intestinal infection has sickened hundreds of people in the last five months, city health officials said yesterday in an advisory that encouraged vigilant hand-washing.
Most of the cases involved children under 10 and their household contacts.
The illness, caused by a common bacterium, Shigella, is rarely fatal, and all seven people who were hospitalized in the current outbreak have recovered, said Esther Chernak, director of the city's acute communicable disease control program.
But the infection's ability to spread quickly and the surge in reported cases - from 10 in a typical year to nearly 200 since September, with many more probably unreported - prompted the alert, she said.
No outbreaks have been reported in the Pennsylvania suburbs or South Jersey.
Shigella causes diarrhea, fever, stomach pain, nausea and vomiting. Most hospitalizations are due to dehydration.
Because the bacterial infection appears in large numbers only periodically - Philadelphia's last outbreak was in 2003, with more than 600 cases - "people dismiss it as a virus," Chernak said. "They don't go to the doctor." It then spreads quickly in schools and day-care centers.
Unlike some other intestinal illnesses, Shigella rarely is traced to an animal or contaminated food. Infected people pass the bacterium through their stool. It is almost always transmitted via direct person-to-person contact or when an infected person touches a counter or prepares food after inadequate hand-washing.
More about Shigella and how to prevent infection: http://go.philly.com/healthEndText
