Why is Salmonella the leading culprit in food poisoning?

Recently, many children in a kindergarten in Lianhu District, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, showed symptoms of suspected food poisoning, such as high fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. A reporter learned from an interview that the local authorities have set up an investigation team, and the health and disease control departments have not yet issued test results. The cause of the incident is under investigation.

It feels like a salmonella infection, and the symptoms match, but we still have to wait for the results of the investigation. Today, let's talk about salmonella.

01. Salmonella

Let’s talk about Salmonella.

Salmonella is the most common cause of food poisoning. In my country, 70-80% of bacterial food poisoning is caused by Salmonella infection.

In fact, salmonella outbreaks occur around the world almost every summer, such as the recent outbreak in Europe. Children's immunity is not yet fully mature, and their intestinal flora is relatively weak, so they often become the main victims of salmonella infection.

There are many sources of Salmonella. For example, eggs and milk are often easily infected with Salmonella, as are meat and of course some vegetables.

In addition, if feces, urine, etc. are not handled properly, it will also lead to pollution of water sources, soil, and feed, and these pollutions may expand, then the number of people involved will be very large.

02. What are the dangers of Salmonella?

What are the dangers of Salmonella? It mainly causes two types of symptoms:

1. Acute gastroenteritis

Generally speaking, the symptoms of Salmonella infection are acute gastroenteritis, which are consistent with the symptoms reported in the news, such as diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, etc.

2. Typhoid and paratyphoid

03. How to deal with Salmonella?

Salmonella is relatively tenacious because of two major characteristics.

1. Facultative anaerobic survival is easy

Salmonella is a facultative anaerobic bacteria, so it has a strong survival ability and can survive both in vitro and in vivo, so it often appears.

2. Zoonotic

This is annoying. Zoonotic diseases are always very annoying, which means that isolation is difficult and the source of contamination is difficult to control.

Therefore, when dealing with Salmonella, disinfection is the key, especially high-temperature disinfection.

Such a large-scale infection in a kindergarten like this one in Xi'an basically indicates that there are serious problems with food hygiene in this kindergarten.

It is possible that the purchased ingredients themselves are contaminated, or there may be other sources of contamination in the kindergarten cafeteria.