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The director general of Health, Francisco García Ruiz, said today that "over the past two weeks have detected four cases of legionnaires' disease in the city of Murcia."

The four affected individuals, age 70, were hospitalized in the Hospital Morales Meseguer, are doing well, his condition is not serious and not at risk, so if all goes well, within days they will be discharged.

Since four patients who live in nearby areas and detection of cases followed sufficiently in time, public health officials the ability to handle the case of an outbreak, as Francisco Garcia said, "has been detected and is being controlled. "

For now, the Environmental Health inspectors are working to identify a possible common source of Legionella, for this purpose we have to check all cooling towers in the area and the inspections have indicated that they are in perfect condition .

However, following the established protocol, samples were taken at towers for cultivation and to detect whether they have the Legionella bacteria.

Health technicians still have no results, but disposed of in the coming days as from samples taken up to analyze the culture takes a period of 15 days and then can see if an relationship between the cases.

In this sense, the head of Public Health said that "we do not throw anything and we want to detect any relationship between the cases that can take us to a common source."

To display a legionellosis, a respiratory infection, those affected must have inhaled particles contaminated with Legionella.

Francisco Garcia also noted that "if during this week and the next case will not be seeing any sign that the point of origin has stopped issuing aerosols into the atmosphere and the focus has been resolved, since the period Legionella incubation is approximately 10 days.

Outbreaks of legionellosis have occurred after persons have inhaled aerosols that contain water contaminated with Legionella bacteria and develop Legionnaires' disease.

Where those affected are from a single place and have been infected while speaking of focus because the source of his infection is the same as the Legionella is not transmitted from person to person.

The summer, because heat is more likely to develop Legionnaires' disease.

It is in the summer when there are more cases of legionnaires' disease in people too, and for the same reason.

Legionella bacteria can be found in various types of water systems.

However, the bacteria reproduce in large numbers in warm, stagnant waters (with temperatures between 32 and 40 degrees Celsius), such as certain water conveyance systems and hot water tanks, cooling towers and evaporative condensers large air conditioning systems.

All systems of this type found in the Region of Murcia are reviewed by extensive controls, both internal to the companies themselves, and externally by inspectors of the Directorate General of Health.

In this regard it should be noted that the Ministry of Health maintains its existing legionella prevention plan and conducts periodic inspections of all these systems in the Region of Murcia.

Regarding the four detected cases, the Director of Public Health wanted to reassure the public, because "if there is a focus with the control measures we have to detect" in the sense he said "we are not under the conditions that occurred in 2001, when we had over 600 cases of legionnaires' disease. "

Cases of legionnaires' disease in the Region

Occur each year in the Region of Murcia between 20 and 30 cases of legionellosis, individualized.

So far, we have detected 14 cases of legionnaires' disease in the Region, which falls within the limits of normal.

6 of them have occurred in recent weeks, 4 are the latest hit to remain hospitalized in the Morales Meseguer and on 2 patients admitted to the Hospital Universitario Virgen de la Arrixaca, none of whom live in the city of Murcia and have related, nor are they likely the 4 cases mentioned.

However, until the Epidemiology Service of the Ministry of Health does not complete its investigations were not able to determine if it is a bulb or several isolated cases.

Source: CARM