As the death toll from Europe’s E. coli outbreak climbs, German officials are coming under mounting criticism for their handling of the crisis.
The New York Times reports that authorities now say 26 people have died, with 25 of the fatalities in Germany and one in Sweden.
Critics have faulted the failure of German health authorities to determine the source of the outbreak, which began spreading in early May. Initially, authorities blamed cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce from Spain for the infection and then, last weekend, investigators switched their attention to sprouts grown in northern Germany, where the outbreak has been centered.
Yet today, even though authorities say sprouts still are prime suspects, officials in eastern Germany said traces of the rare E. coli strain tied to the outbreak had been discovered on cucumber leftovers found in a garbage can belonging to a family hit by the illness.
In the meantime, German officials differed over the immediate outlook for the outbreak. A cautiously optimistic note was sounded by Daniel Bahr, the nation’s health minister, who said it seemed that the number of new diagnoses is declining. “There is much to suggest that we have put the worst behind us,” he said.
But the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s disease control agency, released a statement saying, “There is a declining trend in new cases but it is not clear that it is because the outbreak is really waning or whether it is because the population are being more careful in what they eat.”
As Bloomberg reports, one of the leaders of the opposition Green Party, Baerbel Hoehn, said the country’s decentralized federal system may have compounded a lack of leadership and prevented a speedy response to the crisis.
“To get to the root of all this, the German agriculture minister must say ‘I’ll take charge, I’ll coordinate everything,’” the federal lawmaker said in a television broadcast. “Instead, too many people with new ideas are constantly coming to the fore, which only serves to create more confusion.”
A blogger for the United Kingdom newspaper The Telegraph was even more pointed in his criticism:
Amazingly, Germany does not have an early warning system for outbreaks of the disease and its sclerotic system for reporting it seems designed to guarantee that it spreads uncontrollably before anyone knows it is happening. Many doctors miss the infection, sending patients home without having first taken a stool sample, but even if they do spot it and inform the local health authority long delays then ensue.
Related Posts:
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