“Symptoms are similar to most other acute intestinal infections”: how to protect yourself from salmonellosis

Recently wrote about poisoning in Kyiv - people got sick with an intestinal infection, including salmonellosis, after eating shawarma. What is the danger of salmonellosis and is it possible to prevent it told infectious disease specialist Vasily Kopcha.

- Salmonellosis is an infectious disease that is transmitted in most cases due to poor-quality food, as well as through household contact - from a human carrier of Salmonella. The source of the infectious agent is animals (cattle, pigs, sheep, horses, waterfowl, chickens, reptiles, cats, dogs, domestic rodents), people with salmonellosis or healthy bacteria carriers. Carriage can last from several days to several years.

For example, Salmonella bacteria can survive 5-6 months in water, 3-4 months in meat and sausages, up to 4-10 days in milk at room temperature, and 7 to 13 months in the refrigerator. Salmonella can survive in bird eggs for up to 3-9 months.

Salting and smoking meat products does not guarantee protection against infection. Frozen bird carcasses can keep salmonella for more than a year, because very low temperatures preserve salmonella, leaving them viable.

Man is much inferior to animals in maintaining the circulation of salmonella in nature. More often, salmonellosis in humans occurs as a result of the consumption of infected meat, fish, poultry, eggs, and milk.

Bacteria are resistant to salting, smoking, therefore, long-term heat treatment of food products is necessary to destroy them.

It is very easy to contract salmonellosis from kitchen utensils, since raw meat can contain bacteria, it will not be enough if the knife and cutting board are washed only with cold water. To neutralize the pathogen, kitchen utensils must be doused with boiling water. But it is better to allocate a separate knife and a separate kitchen board for meat.

Read also: Deadly pleasure: ice cream dangerous for children’s health was discovered in Ukraine

- What is the prevention of this infectious disease?

- It is necessary to consume foods only after heat treatment, such as milk, choose only safe water (bottled or chilled boiled), follow the rules of personal hygiene before cooking and eating. It is necessary to wash and pour boiling water over fruits and vegetables. Create proper storage conditions: carefully separate prepared foods from raw foods, protect food and drinks from insects and rodents.

You should not use meat and dairy products purchased at spontaneous markets, as they are sold without the most important veterinary and sanitary control.

- Is it possible for a consumer, for example, of chicken, to suspect by color, taste or smell that something is wrong with it and should not be consumed?

- Salmonella can be determined during laboratory studies (tests), in particular by microscopic method. Therefore, meat and meat products contaminated with salmonella, as a rule, do not have organoleptic changes; their appearance, taste and smell do not arouse any suspicion.

- What are the main symptoms of the disease in humans and tell us cases from practice?

- This is fever, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, weakness. The incubation period averages 12-24 hours, but it happens that it lasts up to 2-3 days. The peak of hospitalization of patients with salmonellosis falls on the spring-summer period. In the hospital for diagnosis, in addition to a general examination, bacteriological studies of stool, vomit, gastric lavage, urine, and blood are carried out.

I will say from practice - most often people become infected with salmonella precisely because of the eggs of waterfowl - ducks and geese, therefore they are strictly forbidden to trade in spontaneous markets, but as you can see, no one adheres to such recommendations. Or patients turn to me and tell me that they cut up a sick chicken and consumed its meat, which was not thermally processed enough. Accordingly, they were infected with salmonellosis.

Earlier wrote that a mass poisoning occurred in a Lviv restaurant and 26 people, including three children, ended up in an infectious diseases hospital with salmonellosis.