Germany pledges 'immediate' review after E.coli crisis contained
German authorities are facing mounting criticism that the fragmented nature of its regional and federal health bodies hampered the speed and efficacy of its response as the official death toll confirmed by the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) rose to 27, with a further 2,900 sickened across 12 countries.
No epidemic police
Health Minister Daniel Bahr told Reuters yesterday that its health bodies would embark on an "immediate evaluation" of how they cooperated in the aftermath of the crisis that some reports claim has killed 30 and cost Europe’s fruit and vegetable producers hundreds of millions of Euros.
But he ruled out the notion of a centralised “epidemic police”, labelling it a “typical German response”.
Baerbel Hoehn, an environment minister in North Rhine-Westphalia, raised concerns that the decentralised political system may have led to a lack of focussed leadership.
Responsibility for monitoring E.coli cases falls to each of the country’s 16 states, while Federal authorities provide advice to regional bodies and the public.
The medical director of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, the largest hospital at the epicentre of the outbreak, backed this view.
“Clearly a more centralized structure is probably better suited to handle this,” said Joerg F. Debatin. “But that really goes down to the roots of what the German political system is made up of.”
Too long?
Concern has been voiced that while the first victims of the new E.coli 0104:H4 were diagnosed on 2 May, the alarm wasn’t raised through the EU-wide rapid alert system for a further three weeks.
Critics have suggested this has been a major reason behind the continuing failure of the authorities to pinpoint its source. If, as is believed, some sort of fresh vegetables are behind the outbreak, the time within such perishable foods are consumed may mean the trail is already too cold for scientists to follow and the cause of the problem impossible to trace.
German officials have already erroneously labelled Spanish cucumbers as the source, while last weekend Gert Lindemann, agriculture minister for Lower Saxony, blamed beansprouts. While scientist refuse to rule the latter out, no tests have yet found traces of the specific E.coli strain on dozens of samples taken.
While the number of new cases being reported daily is now dropping significantly Behr said it was likely more deaths would occur.
Yesterday, the spotlight once again fell on cucumbers after E.coli was found on the vegetable contained in rubbish from a family in Saxony-Anhalt. However, reports suggested that it was not the same strain tied to the current outbreak. The Netherlands also recalled a batch of E.coli-contaminated beansprouts but again the bacteria is not an exact match.
