There are an estimated 100 million cases of foodborne illnesses in the United States each year. As a result of foodborne illnesses, approximately 10,000 fatalities occur and 20 billion dollars are lost in wages and medical care costs annually. It is with investigative epidemiology that we need the active assistance of health care providers.
Many foodborne outbreaks appear to health care providers as unrelated illnesses of unknown origin.
Prompt reporting of both reportable diseases and unusual illnesses can help the Health Department to identify common source outbreaks, intercede to prevent additional cases from the same source and ideally, initiate long-term following changes to prevent similar outbreaks. The following case study illustrates an outbreak that was halted once identified. In 1998, an outbreak of V. parahaemolyticus almost went undetected because individual cases were seen at different hospitals and health care facilities. Not until an active surveillance effort for all possible Vibrio cholerae 01 cases was undertaken by public health epidemiologists was it discovered that a large number of V. parahaemolyticus cases had occurred through-out the New York Metropolitan area within a relatively short time span. With this awareness, the Westchester County Health Department in collaboration with the New York State, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York City, Nassau and Suffolk County Health Departments interviewed all confirmed and suspected V. parahaemolyticus cases.