Kentucky father says his three children caught salmonella from class lizard
Taking classroom pets home for the weekend was a kindergarten ritual 40 years ago, along with the scurrying to find the bunny corpse behind the couch and returning it to class Monday morning.
It’s not dead. It’s sleeping. Tuckered out.
Jerry Curtsinger of Louisville, Kentucky, thought it would be a good idea if his kids could bring home the green anoles, a type of small, green lizard, that are apparently science class favorites.
Curtsinger said the problems began two weeks after his kids took home two lizards from school.
"Caden, our youngest, he got sick, and he had a fever of between 101 and 102.”
In the weeks that followed, Curtsinger and his two other children also became violently ill. And he said the doctor's diagnosis was salmonella.
Curtsinger learned about three out of four lizards carry salmonella. So he brought his concerns to the Jefferson County Public School District.
Lee Ann Nickerson, a science specialist with JCPS, said JCPS has a standard letter that is sent to all parents when their children want to adopt any kind of class pet, which outline the guidelines of each adoption and give some caretaking tips. After the Curtsinger family's salmonella episode, a new warning was inserted into that letter in bold italics.
Those classroom pets are now on double secret probation.
Nickerson said JCPS has been using lizards to demonstrate habitats in science class for several years, and this is the first time anyone has contracted salmonella from them. She also noted that other common pets, such as dogs, can also carry salmonella. Like lizards, they're perfectly safe as long as you practice proper handwashing when you handle them.
I’m sure that’s tremendously comforting to the Curtsinger’s of Kentucky.
British school headmaster channels John Cleese in response to campylobacter outbreak
My favorite John Cleese movie is not one of the Monty Python things, or a Fish Called Wanda, or the Faulty Towers TV bits. It is the rarely seen and vastly underappreciated 1986 effort, Clockwise. It is so … British.
“Brian Stimpson (John Cleese) is the headmaster of a comprehensive (high) school in England. He sets himself, his staff and pupils very high standards. On the way to a conference at which he is to talk, all manner of disasters strike."
Brian Stimpson came to mind after This is Croydon Today reported that Cumnor House School, in Pampisford Road, South Croydon, has been hit by an outbreak of campylobacter.
Headteacher Peter Clare-Hunt, who I am totally envisioning as John Cleese, insists there is no proof that the bug came from the school kitchen.
"We have had five confirmed cases of campylobacter which is a type of food poisoning.
“The recommendation that the environmental health and independent food hygiene consultant made are all very minor and by minor I mean temperatures of fridges. But there is nothing sinister.
"We're talking about food storage, temperatures of fridges not being too high or too low, making sure we don't prepare raw meat alongside salads.”
Yes, John-Cleese-in-Clockwise character: don’t prepare raw meat alongside salads.
Headteacher Peter Clare-Hunt also said,
"In terms of tracing this back to the kitchen that will never be proved one way or the other."
How reassuring.
Students accused of urinating in drinks
Police said three high school students in Hartford, Wis., should face felony juvenile charges for tricking others into drinking beverages containing urine.
Hartford Union Coach Ben Hoffmann informed authorities of an incident Nov. 28 in which a 16-year-old student tricked a basketball teammate into consuming a drink containing urine.
In a similar incident last month, two other male students put urine into soda and later sent out e-mail messages detailing who drank the contaminated beverages.
Dude, wash your hands - researchers required
Handwashing compliance has been identified as a significant factor in reducing foodborne, hospital-acquired and other infectious disease. People say they wash their hands, but often don’t. Our goal is to develop evidence-based, culturally-sensitive messages using a variety of media to compel individuals to practice good handwashing in numerous settings, and to accurately evaluate the effectiveness of different approaches.
That’s a bunch of projects – and we’re looking for a bunch of people with diverse skills. Whatever your background, from microbiology to psychology, as long as you have excellent communication skills and can work both independently and collaboratively, we’re interested in chatting with you. Undergraduate or graduate students, if you’re interested – passionate – about compelling individuals to wash their hands and enhance public health, please contact Dr. Kate Stenske at kstenske@vet.ksu.edu, or Dr. Doug Powell at dpowell@ksu.edu.
Don’t eat poop – wash your hands.
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Hope College in Michigan closed in light of Norovirous outbreak
Ottawa County Health Department officials closed Hope College on Friday after a four-day Norovirous outbreak that has left more than 400 staff and students sick.
“Earlier Sunday, the college said the number of reported cases of the flu-like illness causing vomiting and diarrhea for 24 to 48 hours climbed to 180, but many students felt those numbers self-reported to the health department are low.”
A Facebook page for the campus community called "Hope College: The Great Plague of 2008," was created by a freshman student to find out how many people have been affected by the sickness. About a third of the campus community registered at the site, 14% of who said they are sick or had been.
Health officials strongly urged students to remain on campus, but not to congregate, to help stop the spread of infection. However many students chose to leave campus once the closure was announced. At the earliest, campus is scheduled to reopen on Wednesday. During the closure, a campus cleaning crew will be sanitizing common surfaces.
Norovirous is highly contagious virus that is the leading cause of gastroenteritis in the United States.
No specific treatment is available for Norovirus. In most healthy people, the illness usually is self-limiting and resolves in a few days.
The CDC recommends frequent handwashing, especially after using the bathroom or before preparing food. Contaminated surfaces and materials should be thoroughly disinfected. Infected individual should not prepare food while they have symptoms and for 3 days after they recover from their illness.
Every student's nightmare? Puking in class
As I was beginning the listening section of an introductory French exam today, several students suddenly jumped up. Desks were screeching and I thought there must have been a cockroach or mouse in the room (both things have happened to me in the past at other universities). But no. A student in the front row was only vomiting on the floor and some of his neighbors happened to get hit. The students were all very cool and helpful – getting water and paper towels for the sick classmate. I sent the sick one home but he cleaned up most of his mess. I notified administration, sprayed the floor with some chemical spray, wiped up, and directed the students to another classroom. I went and washed my hands and facilities came within the next 15 minutes to mop the floors.
But what’s the protocol for handling other people’s puke? When I told Doug what happened he reminded me that if the student was sick with a virus like Noro, the germs could be aerosolized and make the rest of us ill. This particular student believed it was a problem with medicine, but to be safe … Washoe County Nevada Health Department suggests:
• Staff should wear disposable gloves and aprons when cleaning up after ill guests, especially when handling vomit, diarrhea, or other bodily wastes. It is recommended that persons who clean areas substantially contaminated by feces and/or vomitus wear masks because spattering or aerosols of infectious material might result in disease transmission. Use of cleaning cloths and other items used to clean toilets should only be used for that purpose and should not be used from room to room. Do not use these items to clean other surfaces. Effective virucides should be used in bathrooms and high hand-contact areas in guest rooms such as taps, faucets, door and drawer handles, door latches, toilet or bath rails, telephones, rails on balconies, light and lamp switches, thermostats, remote controls, curtain pulls and wands, covers on guest information books, alarm clock buttons, hair dryers, irons, and pens.
• Staff should promptly bag and clean soiled linens or dispose of them as infectious waste. Linens soiled with vomit or feces should be washed in a hot wash and dried at high temperature (drier temperature >170º F).
• When responding to a Public Vomiting Incident (PVI), the area within at least a 25-foot radius should be cleaned and disinfected using the above procedures.
• Staff should wash hands thoroughly using soap and water and then dry them thoroughly after completing the clean-up procedure and again after completing the disposal procedure.
A teacher named “Koko” blogged that when this happened in her classroom in China, she used dirt to cover the vomit, made sure it was dry, then swept, threw out the waste, and mopped afterwards. She made her students participate in the cleaning.
