By OLAKUNLE OLAFIOYE

A major health cri­sis may have hit Europe with the fresh outbreak of Salmonella enteritidis.

The disease which is report­ed to have claimed three lives with hundred of others seriously ill, according to The Telegraph, has been linked to have been caused by eggs imported from Europe.

Public Health England is quoted to have confirmed that number of cases from Salmo­nella poisoning linked to the outbreak has now reached 247.

According to the paper, DNA analysis of samples has shown that they are all linked despite being spread across the coun­try in Hampshire, Merseyside and London. Sunday Sun un­derstands that dozens of people have also fallen ill in France and Austria.

A consultant epidemiologist at PHE, Dr. Paul Cleary was quoted to have said there is evidence to suggest the infec­tion came from a single source of eggs that been distributed around Europe.

Salmonella, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is estimated to cause about 1.2 million illnesses in the United States, with about 23, 000 hospitalizations and 450 deaths. People infected with Salmonella develop diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps 12 to 72 hours after infection.

Samonellosis, the illness caused by the bacteria, usu­ally lasts four to seven days, although, most persons recover without treatment, in some per­sons, the diarrhea may be so se­vere that the patient needs to be hospitalized.

In the same, the World Health Organisation, (WHO) said a fresh pandemic which bears similarity with the ravag­ing Ebola virus has broken out in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The ailment, hemorrhagic gastroenteritis is said to have infected 592 while 70 people have been reported to have died since its outbreak.

The ailment, Sunday Sun, learnt has largely ravaged a town known as Boende situ­ated in the same area with Eb­ola River, where the first case of Ebola virus was recorded in 1976. A doctor and four medi­cal personnel are said to be among the 70 people to have been killed by the ailment.

Sunday Sun gathered that ef­forts are on to find the cause of the ailment.

Meanwhile, official figure of people killed by the ravag­ing Ebola virus has been put at 1, 427 while number of cases now stands at 2,615 according to WHO.


Source: Sun