Second E. coli infection diagnosed in Poland?

photo - PAP/Leszek Szymanski

The news comes as the World Health Organisation (WHO) revealed yesterday that a highly infectious new strain of E.coli bacteria is responsible for causing the deadly outbreak of food poisoning in Germany and other countries which has killed up to 17 people across Europe.

Poland’s Health Minister said “the source of [the E. coli] infection is still unknown”.

Last week a woman from Germany was diagnosed with E. coli food poisoning and was also taken to the hospital in Szczecin, not far from the German border.

Chief Sanitary Inspector Przemyslaw Bilinski will visiting the hospital in Szczecin and he will also travel to the Robert Koch Institute in Germany, the national decease centre which is investigating hundreds of cases of E. coli infection in the country.

Enterohaemorrhagic E. coli infection can result acute renal failure, seizures, strokes and coma.

Spain says it is losing up to 200 million euro a week in fruit and vegetable exports after being blamed for being the source of the infection, though no clear evidence has yet been found to confirm this.

On Thursday, Russia banned all imports of fruit and vegetables from EU countries, a move Brussels has described as being “disproportionate”.

"The European Commission protested to the Russian Federation this afternoon against the Russian ban imposed earlier today on all EU vegetable exports to Russia, and requested the immediate withdrawal of the measure," a European Commission spokesman has said. (pg)

Source: IAR, Reuters