Area woman’s death linked to listeriosis
Reported September 08, 2008
Ottawa . An elderly woman has become Ottawa’s first listeriosis-related death this year, but area health officials don’t yet know whether the case is linked to contaminated meat products from Maple Leaf Foods.
Ottawa Public Health was notified on the weekend that the woman died of complications related to listeriosis, Dr. Isra Levy, the city’s medical officer of health, said. However, his office is still awaiting laboratory tests to determine the source of the woman’s bacterial infection. “We’re still investigating whether this case of listeriosis is linked to the Maple Leaf situation,” he said.
City health officials receive about half-a-dozen reports of listeriosis every year, most of which are classified as sporadic.
Since Jan. 1, there have been five such cases, two of which occurred before June 1, which is the timeline cutoff date officials are using to differentiate sporadic cases from the Maple Leaf outbreak.
There have been three cases of listeriosis in Ottawa since June.
Two involved elderly women, including the one who died, while a third involved a middle-aged man. City officials have released little information about the victims.
So far, Maple Leaf Foods has been implicated in only one case involving one of the elderly women. In this case, the woman, a resident in a long-term care facility, was treated for the bacterial infection and released after recovering from her illness. The case involving the middle-aged man, who also recovered, was not related to Maple Leaf Foods. He was not hospitalized and has since recovered.
To date, there have been 29 confirmed cases of listeriosis in Ontario linked to Maple Leaf Foods, Dr. Levy said, noting that the average age of those affected is 77. Another 10 cases are still under investigation, including the one in Ottawa.
Dr. Levy said he hopes to have the results of laboratory tests pertaining to the dead woman this week.
To date, 13 deaths in Canada have been blamed on the presence of Listeria monocytogenes bacterium in tainted meat products from Maple Leaf Foods in Toronto.
City public health officials, meanwhile, recommend that people who suspect they’ve purchased meat contaminated with the listeriosis bacteria get rid of it rather than return it to the store where it was purchased.
Source : Ottawa Citizen 2008