Beansprouts suspected as source of E coli

GERMAN agricultural authorities yesterday identified locally-grown beansprouts as the likely cause of an E coli outbreak that has killed 22 people and sickened over 2,200 others in Europe.

The agriculture ministry of the state of Lower Saxony in the north west of Germany sent an alert yesterday warning people to stop eating the sprouts, which are often used in mixed salads, ministry spokesman Gert Hahne said.

“Bean sprouts have been identified as the product that likely caused the outbreak,” Hahne said. “Many restaurants that suffered from an E coli outbreak had those sprouts delivered.”

Hahne said the sprouts were grown on a farm in Lower Saxony. He said while official test results have not yet conclusively shown that the Lower Saxony-grown sprouts were to blame, “all indications speak to them being” the cause.

He also said authorities would still keep their warning against eating tomatoes, cucumbers or lettuce in place for now. The crisis is the deadliest E coli outbreak in modern history.

The head of Germany’s national disease control centre raised the death toll to 22 yesterday — 21 people in Germany and one in Sweden — and said another 2,153 people in Germany have been sickened. That figure includes 627 people who have developed a rare, serious complication that can cause kidney failure.

Earlier in the day, Germany’s health minister fiercely defended his country’s handling of a deadly E coli outbreak as he toured a hospital in Hamburg, the epicenter of the crisis.

The comments by Health Minister Daniel Bahr seemed to reflect a sharp U-turn in his public response to the crisis, after reports of chaos and unsanitary conditions in the emergency room of the same hospital, the University Medical Center in Hamburg-Eppendorf.

Prior to his visit, Bahr admitted that hospitals in northern Germany were struggling to provide enough beds and medical care for patients stricken by the outbreak, and suggested other regions start taking in patients from the north.

But after one E coli survivor reported that sanitary conditions at the Hamburg hospital were horrendous when she arrived with cramps and bloody diarrhoea, Bahr announced his visit and changed his tune.

Bahr told reporters that, despite capacity problems at some hospitals, German medical workers and northern state governments were doing “everything necessary” to help E coli victims: “I witnessed how the employees in the institutions have been working intensively and informing patients early and transparently” about their conditions.”

Nicoletta Pabst, 41, said sanitary conditions at the Hamburg-Eppendorf hospital were shocking and its emergency room was overflowing with ailing people when she arrived: “All of us had diarrhoea and there was only one bathroom each for men and women — it was a complete mess.

“If I hadn’t been sick with E coli by then, I probably would have picked it up over there.”

After waiting three hours to be seen, Pabst was told to go home because her blood levels did not indicate that she had kidney failure. When her symptoms deteriorated sharply, she had to return by ambulance the next morning and was treated for a week at a different hospital.

Jan Kielstein, a nephrologist at a hospital in Hannover, told the Tagblatt newspaper that staffers there were working day and night to treat E coli patients.

“Some employees even cancelled their vacations and they are highly motivated to help in this serious situation,” he said.