Listeriosis death toll has risen to 61, health minister reveals

THE death toll from South Africa’s listeriosis outbreak has almost doubled since just over a month ago from 36 to 61, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said yesterday.

He also said the number of cases of listeriosis confirmed by lab testing had risen from 557 to 727 in the same period.

Motsoaledi said in Pretoria that even though more cases had been confirmed by laboratories‚ the department was still a long way from tracing all patients or the source of the latest outbreak.

“Out of the total of 727 laboratory-confirmed cases we know about‚ we are only able to trace 134 actual patients – only 18%,” he said.

“Out of the 134 traced patients‚ 61 had died.”

Motsoaledi said the department had taken several measures to fight the outbreak‚ including declaring listeriosis a notifiable condition for the first time in history.

It was also conducting genome sequencing analysis on samples, as well as checking with potential source areas that hygiene guidelines were followed.

The minister said the genome sequencing analysis showed that 247 cases had arisen clinically, while 74 were from contaminated food.

Motsoaledi said 91% of the isolates were ST6-type isolates‚ representing monocytogenes‚ the strain present in the current outbreak.

He said this find supported the theory that a single source of food contamination may have caused the outbreak from one or more food products at a single food facility.

But he said such a food product or facility had not yet been definitively identified.

“The food and environmental samples are represented by 18 sequence types‚ four of which are also represented in clinical isolates,” Motsoaledi said.

“However, no food or environmental isolates have been identified to date.”

As a precaution, he said, environmental health practitioners had visited Sovereign Foods’s abattoir to collect food samples.

While these samples did not pick up the ST6 strain‚ the tests found other strains with the potential to cause disease.

“At this juncture‚ we cannot conclude that the Sovereign Foods [abattoir] is the source of the present outbreak,” Motsoaledi said.

“But we can conclude that it has listeria‚ which can cause illness, [so] it was in the best interest of public health that the abattoir was [provisionally] prohibited from further preparing food.”

Eastern Cape-based Sovereign Foods is one of the major poultry producers in Africa.

The company delisted from the JSE on November 22‚ concluding a management buyout funded by private equity firm Capitalworks.

World Health Organisation country representative Rufaro Chatora said South Africa had done well to declare listeriosis a notifiable condition.

While the condition had been found in France‚ the US and Denmark‚ he said, South Africa’s latest outbreak was one of the longest.

Acting Agriculture‚ Forestry and Fisheries director-general Mooketsa Ramasodi said the department was compiling a list of countries, including Brazil, where it was considering a precautionary and temporary ban on the import of foods which could have been contaminated through unhygienic practices. – BusinessLIVE

Of the 727 cases, we [have traced only] 134 patients – 18%