Neil Cunningham

2) There is no doubt that extreme weather events make the STEC situation worse, as the micro floods bring the contaminated topsoil into neighbouring fields and the chain of contamination speeds up from there. In Irish public health units, we always know that we’ll be really busy with STEC when the spring and summer rains are very heavy.

But it’s difficult because the solutions are difficult politically. 1) You see this bug in countries with high density sheep and cattle (Denmark recently overtook us as the STEC capital of Europe). We can’t just blame farmers, but we do need a serious discussion about farming and the environment. Because you rarely see this bug in areas that don’t over-farm.

So this paper gives is really strong evidence to advocate for structural change. We have so much STEC/VTEC in Ireland. And we see so much illness from it. We have to keep infected children out of crèche for often very long periods if they become chronic carriers of this bug, which is disruptive for their parents and damaging for their child. We keep low paid workers (who frequently don’t have sick pay) out of their food handling and caring jobs if they become chronic carriers. These people often can’t pay their bills because of this bug.

This is a fascinating paper in the current edition of @Eurosurveillanc carried out by public health colleagues in @UKHSA It relates to the journey towards a large STEC\VTEC outbreak in the UK in 2022. It’s really relevant to the Irish experience because we have one of the highest rates of STEC in Europe, but we don’t routinely have access to these types of environmental surveillance tools for our investigations. However, the story of this outbreak is reflected in our experience here….that climate change, overfarming and lack of access to mains water outside Dublin are all causing human disease….