Listeria claims nine in Limpopo

Health MEC Phophi Ramathuba regards the listeria outbreak in the country as disastrous and during a media briefing at the Premier’s Office on Friday divulged that 48 cases have been reported in the province since the announcement of the outbreak last year. Nine of the 48 victims died from the disease, she revealed.
She went on to say 34 cases were reported by private health facilities and 14 by public health institutions. Ramathuba indicated that 18 of the patients revealed that they had started noticing symptoms associated with listeria after consuming cold meat while others could not remember what they ate.
When asked if the presence of the listeria bacteria at Enterprise Foods in Polokwane could be attributed to poor hygiene, she said “The facility has not been complying with the hygiene standards, hence as Government we need to come up with a solid strategy to strengthen hygiene standards. The outbreak serves as a lesson to us and we are working tirelessly as a multidisciplinary team to deal with whatever issue reported to us.”
She said Capricorn District Municipality (CDM) did not just target the factory but conducted the tests after learning about children who were diagnosed with listeria last year in Soweto after reportedly eating polony. After several tests, the department together with CDM realised that the supplier of polony was Enterprise Foods and another factory in Germiston, she explained
Ramathuba revealed that the municipality met with the factory management and recommended that the factory should be closed for deep cleaning. It is the competency of the district municipalities to conduct such tests and the department is currently building on the capacity of the municipalities for the teams to be more effective, she explained.
“After the Minister of Health first reported the listeria outbreak we immediately started training health experts to deal with the disease hence we are more equipped to deal with the crisis. Rural provinces which are always the targets of cholera and typhoid are partly affected this time around maybe because people in rural provinces cannot afford cold meat. There is a lot of work that is being done behind the scenes to deal with the matter. We are planning to target other abattoirs for them to have regular cleansing programmes,” Ramathuba said.
She added that residents should always practice standard hygiene to avoid a number of diseases and further urged people to wash fruits and vegetables before consumption.

Story & photos: ENDY SENYATSI
>>endy@observer.co.za