German hospitals 'overwhelmed by E.coli'

Hospitals in northern Germany are being overwhelmed as they struggle to provide enough beds and medical care for patients stricken by an outbreak of E.coli, the German health minister admitted today.

“The situation in the hospitals is intense,” minister Daniel Bahr told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, adding that clinics outside of Hamburg and northern Germany – the epicentre of the E.coli outbreak – should start taking in ill persons from the north.

Bahr announced he would visit the University Medical Centre in Hamburg-Eppendorf later today to see the situation first-hand and talk to doctors and nurses who have been working overtime and double-shifts for weeks in a row.

Hamburg is the epicentre of the deadliest E.coli outbreak in modern history, which has killed at least 18 people since May 2. More than 1,700 people in Germany have been infected, including 520 suffering from a life-threatening complication that can cause kidney failure. Ten other European nations and the US have reported 90 other cases, all but two related to visits in northern Germany.

While suspicion has fallen on raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce as the source of the bacterial outbreak, researchers have been unable to pinpoint exactly where or what food was responsible.

Researchers from Germany’s national disease control centre have inspected a restaurant in the northern city of Luebeck where 17 people were reported to have fallen ill with E.coli last month. Health experts were also investigating whether the disease spread at a festival in Hamburg that was visited by 1.5 million people.

Critics have questioned the slow pace of the investigation. The medical director of Berlin’s Charite Hospitals, Ulrich Frei, said it made him “anxious” that a month after the outbreak there was still no clue as to what caused it and said experts “should have interviewed the patients right away”.

Fear of the aggressive E.coli outbreak also spread to countries outside Europe.

The Gulf nation of Qatar today temporarily banned imports of fresh cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce from Spain and Germany because of concerns and insisted all other fresh fruit and vegetable shipments from Europe carry a health certificate declaring they are free of the E.coli bacteria.

The United Arab Emirates has banned cucumber imports from Spain, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, while Lebanon has banned all vegetables from the 27-nation European Union.

Russia has also banned vegetables from the entire EU to keep the outbreak from spreading east, a move the EU called disproportionate and Italian farmers denounced as “absurd”. No E.coli infections have been reported in Russia.