Disease

Foot and Mouth Disease in Colombia

Mexico's agriculture sanitation authority SENASICA said on Friday it has suspended all dairy imports from Colombia after new outbreaks of foot and mouth disease were detected in the Andean country.

Colombian authorities said two new outbreaks of the disease were discovered in the central Cundinamarca department, where there are six dairy processing plants authorized to export to Mexico. Earlier this month, Russia and Curacao, two of Colombia's biggest beef buyers, suspended meat shipments from the Andean nation after an outbreak of the disease.

Germany reports increase in infectious diseases

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) released the Infectious Disease Epidemiology Annual Report (computer translated) earlier this week and it shows an increase in infectious diseases in the country.

They say in the report that the increases have been influenced by the increase in incoming asylum seekers, as well as partly due to their increased disease screening.

However, the change in the case definitions of certain notifiable diseases in 2015 which was only step-wise implemented at local public health authorities also influences the number of cases e.g. for hepatitis B and hepatitis C.

Rising case numbers of Campylobacter enteritis, hepatitis E and whooping cough were observed in 2016.

For a large number of the vaccine-preventable diseases, e.g. tick-borne encephalitis, hepatitis A, chickenpox, disease mostly occurred in non-vaccinated patients, even though effective vaccination is available.

Other notable outbreaks were: a legionellosis outbreak in Bremen with a total of 24 cases, including 2 deaths; a botulism outbreak affecting 6 and an outbreak of 6 tularemia cases which occurred during grape harvesting and were associated with the consumption of contaminated grape juice.

According to the document, Infectious epidemiological yearbook of notifiable diseases for 2016 (computer translated), also shows increased incidences of adenoviral conjunctivitis, cryptosporidium, dengue fever, enterohemorrhagic E. coli, Haemophilus influenza and leprosy, among others.