Foodborne Disease Outbreak

A mother of a young child called the Vermont Department on February 5 to report the possibility of a foodborne disease outbreak after her child aged 5 years and two other children of her neighbor aged 7 and 10 years became ill with a lot of vomiting and diarrhea that took place within an interval of 12 hours. The child’s sickness became severe that the mother took her to a local hospital where she was kept at the emergency department.

The mother stated that the child complained of nausea at 10 o’clock the 2nd day of February, later, the child began vomiting and having multiple episodes of diarrhea, she was not able to eat or drink anything without vomiting. As it approached evening, the woman took the child to the local hospital where she was admitted at the emergency department, here they noted the child was dehydrated and had a lot of fever. The stool and blood specimen of the child was collected and the child was given intravenous fluids as a treatment and later she was released; the following day the mother made follow ups on the test results for the child and it turned out the stool culture displayed negative results for usual bacteria (Brehm-Stecher et al, 2009, p. 1774).

Two children who were nearby neighbors reported to have nausea, diarrhea, vomiting and fever, this were similar symptoms to that of the other child even though these two children were not as ill as the woman’s child. These symptoms began a few hours earlier than that of the woman’s child and the two children were able to go to school the following day after becoming ill. The three children did not play together from time to time and they only attended a birthday party the 1st day of February, one of the main concerns from the mother was the homemade ice cr...

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...ar care should be taken for children using diapers. Norovirus are contagious from the moment a patient feels ill and will last 3 days to over a period of two weeks after recovering from the illness; any person can therefore get norovirus infection which are of different strains. Vaccine for prevention of the virus has not been found and there is no drug that will treat a person infected with norovirus disease since the antibiotics can tread bacteria and not viruses. To prevent infections, several preventive measures should be taken, this includes frequent washing of the hands, washing fruits and vegetables, disinfecting contaminated surfaces using a bleach-based household cleaner, discarding any vomits and ensuring the surrounding area is clean and the person infected by the virus should not prepare food for a period of three days after recovering from the illness.