The British government will overhaul its sterilization procedures at hospitals to include the use of disposable instruments to reduce the risk to patients of spreading the human form of mad cow disease. An expert committee on bovine spongiform encephalopathy said that there is a theoretical risk of spreading the human form of the disease through contaminated surgical instruments, according to a NewsEdge article. Contaminated meat and bone meal from Britain may have created a worldwide epidemic of bovine spongiform encephal-ophathy, experts warn. Meat and bone meal was banned in Britain in 1988 but British feed mills continued to export it abroad, even when the risks were known, notes an article in NewsEdge. Meat and bone meal have now been banned from use for the next 6 months in Europe, where it was legal to feed it to pigs and poultry.
European vets are likely to press for a permanent ban.
Legionnaire s disease appears in Paris. A Paris hospital has banned showers and ordered water pipes disinfected after four people there were diagnosed with Legionnaire s disease, said health officials. All four people caught the respiratory disease in the past month, explained Dr. Guy Meyer, president of the infectious disease unit at Paris new Georges Pomidou European Hospital. One patient died, but his death was related to a heart condition. The other three patients were treated with antibiotics and are doing well, notes the Associated Press.