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Marina Nikolova

There are no concerns in Greece that cucumbers contaminated with Escherichia coli (E. Coli) have been imported. The infection with E.coli is most often due to the consumption of poorly cooked meat or contaminated food and in most cases it is not life threatening. It causes only gastroenteritis.

The inspection carried out in super-markets and shops selling fruits and vegetables in a central Athens neighbourhood showed that the cucumbers are locally produced and come mostly from Crete, the island of Syros and Messinia. Asked whether the consumers should be worried about the imported cucumbers, the sellers wave and say: "What have the Spanish cucumbers to do with Greece? We buy cucumbers from manufacturers on the island of Syros" or elsewhere in the country. The epidemiologist Sotiris Tsiodras from the Hellenic Centre for Diseases Control and Prevention answered GRReporter’s questions.

"As far as we know there is no concern that cucumbers are imported in Greece. The symptoms of this serious complication are bleeding diarrhea and abdominal pain. Most likely, the cucumbers have been infected during packaging, during their irrigation, cultivation and picking in the field or during their washing in Germany. It is not clear yet where the contamination happened - in Spain or elsewhere. The only thing we know is that people who ate lettuces, raw tomatoes and cucumbers are most likely to exhibit this syndrome. They have found this bacterium in cucumbers in a laboratory in Germany. Probably the bacterium is also present in lettuce and raw tomatoes. It is not clear yet. An epidemiological study needs to be done and this information to be confirmed subsequently," said the epidemiologist Prof. Sotiris Tsiodras for GRReporter.

"There are no cucumbers imported from Spain in Greece, but people should always observe hygiene and wash their hands. The only preventive measures that should be taken are good hygiene, washing hands and very good washing and cooking of vegetables and meat, because this complication occurs as result of poorly cooked and roasted meat too. I would recommend the people who have health problems and travel in areas where the infection has been detected to avoid eating raw vegetables," added Tsiodras.
 
There are eleven confirmed deaths from contaminated vegetables in Germany until now and an emergency meeting was held in Berlin today because of the epidemic. The incubation period before the symptoms of the disease is ten days, so the number of the infected is expected to increase in the coming days, reported FreshPlaza. Although the infected by this bacterium in most cases are children under the age of 5, more than 80% of the infected adults are women and the highest number of infected people is registered in the area around Hamburg, reported the BBC. Cases of the infection are also registered in Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands and UK, and hundreds have been hospitalised for treatment.

There are regulations in Austria and the Czech Republic for the withdrawal of the vegetables from Spain from the shops, since the country is considered to be one of the sources of the infection. In Greece, the service controlling the foods stated that "nothing in the data so far shows that these products are distributed in the Greek market" but the necessary control is carried out in super-markets and shops. At the same time, there was a publication in the New England Journal of Medicine last week that scientific researches have used a medicine that has cured three patients. Currently, the experimental medication eculizumab is being distributed free in the German hospitals in an attempt to accelerate its approval and to cure those suffering from this serious gastrointestinal complication. According to the Forbes Magazine, this is the most expensive drug packaging in the world, because the treatment is worth 400,000 dollars a year, says a large article in the Greek daily Naftemporiki.