An E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak in Jasper County, Missouri, has killed a 51-year-old Carthage woman and sickened several other people, including two others who had confirmed cases of E. coli 0157:H7 infection.
Jasper County Health Department Director Tony Moehr said the outbreak stemmed from contaminated food or beverage served at the Thanksgiving family dinner November 27. An investigation is attempting to determine which food or beverage item caused the outbreak. Food contaminated with E. coli may not look or smell spoiled. Moehr previously said the woman who died on December 8 contracted hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a complication of E. coli 0157:H7 infection that is the leading cause of E. coli death.
More than 20 people attended the family dinner and 11 experienced gastrointestinal illness. Moehr said the second confirmed E. coli infection occurred in a Jasper County resident who attended the event. A third case was reported in Dade County, also involving an attendee. “We have identified seven or eight additional illnesses related to that gathering, but we don’t have the test results back for them. These cases occurred around the same period of time but were not as severe,'' Moehr told reporter Wally Kennedy at the Joplin Globe newspaper.
Moehr said people started to become ill on November 30. The first E. coli case was confirmed Dec. 6. "It could have come from a variety of sources, but it was something that was consumed at that event,'' Moehr told the newspaper.
E. coli O157:H7 is a strain of E. coli that produces large quantities of a potent toxin that can damage the intestine with potentially serious health consequences. Most people recover without antibiotics or other specific treatment in 5-10 days. But in 5 to 15 percent of E. coli 0157:H7 cases, patients develop HUS -- a disease that attacks a person's red blood cells, altering blood-clotting or causing blocked circulation in the kidneys or elsewhere. In the U.S. every year, about 80 people die from E. coli-related HUS. Once an infection has been established, no therapeutic interventions are available to lessen the risk of the course HUS will take.
National food safety law firm PritzkerOlsen, P.A., currently represents E. coli HUS survivors and all victims of E. coli 0157:H7 outbreaks. Our firm is one of the few in the country practicing extensively in the area of foodborne illness litigation and we have collected millions of dollars for victims of food poisoning. PritzkerOlsen also is actively involved in efforts to make our food supply safe from E. coli and other dangerous human pathogens. If you have legal questions about an E. coli illness suffered in this outbreak or any other outbreak, call an attorney at 1-888-377-8900 (Toll Free) for a free case consultation. If you complete the contact form on the side of this web page, an attorney will call you.
