Food borne illness short answer questions
1. What is the infectious agent (pathogen) that causes this infectious disease? For example, the name of the bacteria, virus or parasite.
Salmonella is an infection with salmonella bacteria.
2. How is this infectious agent transmitted through food or water?
Salmonella can definitely be transmitted through food products, mostly raw foods. It can definitely be transmitted on food that has been prepared on surfaces that has already cam in contact with the illness. I have also read that you can get salmonella from handling pets such as reptiles like snakes and turtles. It can be found in water and soil as well.
3. What is an example of a real life outbreak of this food borne illness in the United States?
There was recently an outbreak of salmonella illness in spring 2008. It was founded and investigated when hundreds of people through out the United States became sick after eating contaminated food, They actually came to the conclusion that it could have came from fresh jalapeno and Serrano peppers from Mexico. They also considered raw tomatoes as well. They ended up narrowing it down to what farms that were involved. After doing some research and found this article it did shock me because I was 18 years old at the time of this outbreak and I have never heard of this happening. I do think that everyone should be aware of things like this when it happens because it will educate you on how to protect yourself.
4. What are the clinical symptoms, duration of the disease and treatment if any?
The symptoms of salmonella are fever, diarrhea and cramps as well in the abdomen area; the symptoms will end up developing 12 to 72 hours after getting in contact with the illness. The illness will end up lasting 4 to 7 days. You can also begin to get severely dehydrated. The dehydration and diarrhea can be so bad that you will need to be seen by a doctor. To tell