Austrian officials inspected supermarkets on Monday for Spanish vegetables suspected of contamination with a potentially fatal bacteria that has sickened hundreds of Europeans. In Germany, the death toll from the outbreak rose to 11.
Spain, meanwhile, went on the defensive, saying there was no proof that the E. coli outbreak has been caused by Spanish vegetables.
Spain’s Secretary of State for European Affairs, Diego Lopez Garrido, said Madrid might take action against those pointing fingers at his southern European nation.
“You can’t attribute the origin of this sickness to Spain,” Lopez Garrido told reporters in Brussels. “There is no proof and that’s why we are going to demand accountability from those who have blamed Spain for this matter.”
Austrian authorities sent inspectors to 33 organic supermarkets Monday to make sure Spanish vegetables suspected of contamination have been taken off shelves. The move came after a recall and sales ban of cucumbers, tomatoes and eggplants that originated in Spain and were delivered to stores in Austria by German companies.
“If anything is found to be left over, it will be tested and taken off the market,” Austrian Health Ministry spokesman Fabian Fusseis said.
While two German tourists have tested positive for enterohaemorrhagic E.coli, also known as EHEC, no so-called homegrown cases have been reported, he added.
In Germany, where the death toll rose to 11 on Monday, officials said even though they know that Spanish cucumbers tainted with EHEC have carried the bacteria, they still have not been able to determine the exact source.
“We have found the so-called EHEC pathogens on cucumbers, but that does not mean that they are responsible for the whole outbreak,” Andreas Hensel, president of Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, said on ZDF television.
Spanish Health Minister Leire Pajin, noting that no Spanish cases have been reported, urged Germany to speed up its probe and establish proof of what has caused the outbreak. Germany’s allegations “create alarm and affect the producers of a country without any evidence,” she said.
In Poland, officials said Monday that a woman has been hospitalized in serious condition after returning from a trip to the northern German city of Hamburg, where at least 467 cases of intestinal infection have been recorded.
On Sunday, authorities said those included 91 cases of the more severe hemolytic uremic syndrome, but the officials noted on Monday that the number of new diarrhea cases was declining. HUS is a rare complication arising from infection associated with the E. coli bacterium.
Czech officials said tests on 120 potentially tainted Spanish cucumbers pulled off shelves on Sunday are expected to be concluded in two days. No illnesses have been reported.
In Italy, meanwhile, the country’s paramilitary Carabinieri tainted food squad has been on the lookout since Saturday for any contaminated cucumbers, checking imports from Spain, the Netherlands and other European countries. So far, lab analyses have come back negative, and no cases of food poisoning have been reported.
Still, Italy’s agriculture lobby, Coldiretti, urged Italians to support their local growers to avoid imports.
Currently, Italian supermarkets are full of peaches, apricots, cherries and plums from Spain. As for pickles and cucumbers, Italy imported some 8 million kilograms (17 million pounds) from Spain last year.
EU spokesman Frederic Vincent said Sunday that two greenhouses in Spain that were identified as the source of the contaminated cucumbers had ceased activities. The water and soil there are being analyzed to see whether they were the problem, and the results are expected Tuesday or Wednesday, said Vincent.
The EU notified member states Friday of the source of the outbreak, which has affected primarily the Hamburg area of Germany and, to a lesser extent, Sweden, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, according to Vincent.
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Karel Janicek in Prague, Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Poland, Frances D’Emilio in Rome, Ciaran Giles in Madrid and David Rising in Berlin contributed.
A gunman went on a rampage in Slovakia’s capital on Monday, killing seven people and wounding 15, then committed suicide, officials said.
Five of the fatalities were members of a Roma family who lived in an apartment where the man began his attack with a machine gun and two pistols, said Interior Minister Dusan Lipsic. Roma, also known as Gypsies, often face discrimination in eastern Europe, but Lipsic and police chief Jaroslav Spisiak said the unidentified gunman’s motive was not known.
Another man shot and killed outside the building was “probably” also a member of the same family, Lipsic said.
“So far we don’t know the motive … so I will not speculate whether it did or did not have (a) racial motive,” he told The Associated Press at a news conference. “I doubt it, but of course the investigation is ongoing.”
The shooting took place at midmorning in the rundown Devinska Nova Ves neighborhood on the outskirts of the Slovak capital that is surrounded by fields and industrial areas.
The five Roma who died in the apartment — four women and a man — lived in a brown high-rise building, Spisiak said.
Police rushed to the scene as the attacker, about 50 years old, was leaving the building, and he fired indiscriminately at people in the area, wounding 15, including a policeman and a 3-year-old boy who was shot in the ear, Lipsic said.
The seventh fatality was a woman who was shot in the area as she walked to the balcony of her apartment when she heard the gunfire, Lipsic said.
Daniel Zitnan of Bratislava’s Children’s Hospital said the 3-year-old boy was only slightly hurt and released. During the attack, he was in a car that was hit by bullets, Zitnan said.
Renata Vandriakova, who heads the emergency room of one Bratislava hospitals and oversees the city’s response to health emergencies, said one of the 15 wounded had to be operated on and was in critical condition.
Emergency crews blocked off the scene of the attack, which also includes a kindergarten and a supermarket.
Hours after the attack, stunned residents milled about in disbelief.
“I’m shocked,” said 20-year-old Andre Smahovski, a student whose friend was injured in the attack. “Normally this doesn’t happen here.”
Christian Padour, 40, described how his sister-in-law was at a doctor’s office when a woman who had been shot by the gunman entered — to the horror of those present.
“I feel safe here, but now it looks like the Wild West,” Padour said.
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Rybarova reported from the Czech Republic.
Two heavy hitters on the world health stage — Bill Clinton and Bill Gates — called Monday for a more efficient fight worldwide against the AIDS virus.
In separate speeches at an international AIDS conference in the Austrian capital, the former American president railed against spending too much money on reports that just sit on shelves and urged that funds directly target AIDS sufferers. Gates, the founder of Microsoft Corp., said health groups must adopt better business practices that deliver more bang for the buck.
Clinton said many countries are misspending foreign aid. He said funding should go directly to local organizations, because developing countries can deliver health services at a lower cost and less overhead than established organizations.
“In too many countries too much money goes to pay for too many people to go to too many meetings, get on too many airplanes,” Clinton said. “Keep in mind that every dollar we waste today puts a life at risk.”
The number of people taking crucial AIDS drugs climbed by a record 1.2 million last year to 5.2 million overall, the World Health Organization said Monday. Between 2003 and 2010, the number of patients receiving lifesaving antiretroviral treatment increased twelve-fold, according to the Geneva-based body.
“We are very encouraged by this increase. It is indeed the biggest increase that we have seen in any single year,” said Gottfried Hirnschall, director of the WHO’s HIV/AIDS department.
Clinton also called on aid groups to remember that the world was “awash in trouble” due to the impact of the financial crisis.
“It is easy to rail at a government and say why doesn’t the government give us more money if they’re giving somebody else money,” he said. “But the government gets its money … from taxpayers who have lower incomes today than they did two years ago.”
Gates said although finding new funding was critical, more could be done with the resources that were already available.
The Global Fund to Fight HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria, one of the biggest funders of AIDS programs, has in the past found evidence of fraud in countries’ health programs — like Uganda and Zambia — and suspended their programs or tried to get the money back.
“Even if we advocate for more funding, we can do more to get the most benefit from each dollar,” Gates told delegates. “If we push for a new focus on efficiency in both treatment and prevention and we continue … to create new tools, we can drive down the number of infections dramatically and start writing the story of the end of AIDS.”
Some countries — such as Russia — are not using data to make funding decisions that target the right populations because those groups make politicians uncomfortable, Gates added.
“If you’re afraid to match your prevention efforts to the right populations, then you’re wasting money and that costs lives,” he said.
Clinton said in order to have the “moral standing” to ask for more funding, organizations should prove to governments that “we’re doing our job faster, better and cheaper.” He also defended President Barack Obama’s efforts on AIDS.
“You can demonstrate and call the president names or we can go get some more votes in Congress to get some more money,” Clinton said. “My experience is that the second choice is the better one.”
On Sunday, the head of the conference said world leaders lack the political will to ensure that everyone infected with HIV and AIDS gets treatment.
Julio Montaner — the president of the International AIDS Society and chairman of the AIDS 2010 conference — said the G-8 group of rich nations has failed to deliver on a commitment to guarantee universal access to AIDS drugs and warned this could have dire consequences.
Montaner’s comments foreshadowed one of the key topics for the weeklong gathering, which organizers say has drawn 20,000 policymakers, experts and advocates.
In 2005, G-8 leaders committed to an Africa-focused package for HIV prevention and treatment that gets “as close as possible to universal access to treatment for all those who need it by 2010.” They reaffirmed that commitment again in 2006.
But a G-8 report from last month’s summit of world leaders in Canada acknowledged that the AIDS treatment targets will not be met by 2010.
According to the World Health Organization, 33.4 million people were living with HIV in 2008. While the number of deaths declined to 2 million in 2008 from 2.2 million in 2004, about 2.7 million new infections still occur each year.
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Associated Press Medical Writer Maria Cheng contributed to this report from London.
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Online:
http://www.aids2010.org/
Governments around the world must step up their efforts to limit access to “date-rape drugs,” sedatives that are secretly added to a person’s drink to reduce their ability to resist sexual assault and remember it later, a watchdog said Wednesday.
Sexual predators can easily procure such date-rape drugs, despite existing efforts to curb their misuse, the International Narcotics Control Board said in its annual report.
Governments should quickly adopt measures to limit illegal access to such drugs, and increase public awareness about the risks of leaving food and drinks unattended at public events such as parties, the board said. They also must do a better job of analyzing urine samples in suspected cases and be consistent about compiling and sharing statistics.
“The ‘date-rape drug’ phenomenon, although fairly new, is evolving rapidly as sexual abusers attempt to circumvent stricter drug controls by using substances not restricted by international drug conventions,” the Vienna-based U.N. body said in a statement accompanying the report.
The misuse of flunitrazepam — sold under the brand name Rohypnol — has been reduced, thanks to international efforts, but the report said criminals are now using gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid — known as GHB — or ketamine and gamma-Butyrolactone, commonly referred to as GBL.
“Since in many countries most of those drugs are easily available, they frequently fall into criminal hands,” the board said.
While GHB was put under international control in 2001, not all countries have followed up with regulations on a national level, the report said. Ketamine and GBL, meanwhile, remain outside drug conventions and can therefore be easily obtained.
“Drug traffickers obtain the substances in question through Internet pharmacies and the mail system, or from illicit manufacture,” the report said.
To tackle the problem, the board urged governments to work together with the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, and to ensure that police and prosecutors have the legal authority to take appropriate action against offenders or suspects.
“In many countries, the use of substances to facilitate the commission of crime does not constitute a criminal offense and therefore cannot be properly sanctioned,” the report said.
The report also included these findings:
–In many countries, prescription drugs are the second or third most abused category of drugs. In the U.S., 6.2 million people abused prescription drugs in 2008. That was more than the total number of people who abused cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, ecstasy and inhalants. In Germany, an estimated 1.4 million to 1.9 million people are addicted. While almost all countries are confronted with prescription drug trafficking and abuse, there is still a significant lack of awareness and data about the problem.
–Faced with tighter controls of chemicals needed to make some drugs, traffickers and underground manufacturers are successfully shifting gears. Since a comprehensive ban on ephedrine and pseudoephedrine took effect in Mexico, for example, traffickers are increasingly using phenylacetic acid to make methamphetamine.
–In Central America and the Caribbean, drug traffickers are increasingly using light aircraft with stolen or falsified registration numbers to transport illegal substances. Drug trafficking by sea also remains a problem in the region.
–The smuggling of cocaine through West Africa from South America into Europe and elsewhere continues to be a serious problem and is contributing to an increase in cocaine abuse in the region. The seizure in Guinea in July of large amounts of chemicals and equipment suspected of being used to make synthetic drugs shows the region also remains at risk of being used by traffickers for the diversion of chemicals.
–Trafficking in amphetamine-type stimulants has increased in South Asia and the discovery of several methamphetamine laboratories in the region over the past two years shows that countries in the area are increasingly being used to produce stimulants. In India, courier and postal services have become a common means of smuggling drugs out of the country.
–While Britain, Italy, France and Germany account for most of the heroin seized in Europe, Eastern Europe’s underground market for opiates has continued to expand. Recent national surveys suggest that cannabis use is stabilizing in many countries in the region. However, in Denmark, Spain and Britain, drug abusers may be replacing amphetamines and ecstasy with cocaine.
–The United States continues to be the world’s largest market for illegal drugs. Cannabis remains the most commonly abused substance, followed by the misuse of prescription drugs.
–Afghanistan remains by the far the largest illegal producer of heroin and other opiates and also is becoming a major producer of cannabis.
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On the Net:
International Narcotics Control Board: http://www.incb.org/
In the name of art, an Austrian landmark is encouraging visitors to confront their sexual inhibitions by having them walk through a swingers club to reach one of Gustav Klimt’s masterpieces.
The Secession — a world-renowned venue for contemporary art in downtown Vienna — has temporarily incorporated a sex club named “Element6″ as part of a project by Swiss artist Christoph Buechel.
The swingers are not there during the day, but their mattresses, erotic pictures, bar and whirlpool are.
Secession spokeswoman Urte Schmitt-Ulms said Buechel hoped to spark a stir reminiscent of the scandal Klimt caused when his “Beethoven Frieze” was first exhibited in 1902. Now considered one of the Austrian painter’s key pieces, it was once thought of as obscene and pornographic because of the way women’s bodies were depicted.
While the club only opens at night long after the art hall closes, daytime visitors aged 18 and older pass through its dimly lit rooms on their way to see the Klimt painting.
The room where the frieze is exhibited is locked at night for security reasons. But it too has its share of mattresses, surrounded by fake tropical plants and a life-size stuffed lion.
Buechel declined to comment on his project, but the club, normally located in another part of town, said its participation “aims to give as many people as possible the opportunity to overcome their inhibitions.”
“In the framework of this exhibition at the Secession, each individual can test for himself or herself whether this opens up new dimensions for his or her own sexuality,” the club said in a statement.
There’s no question that Buechel has succeeded in igniting a debate.
“Group sex in the Secession – has our society completely lost it?” Austria’s far-right Freedom Party asked.
Yet on the streets of Vienna, people appeared more amused than abhorred.
“I think it’s perfectly OK,” said Moritz Wagner, a 26-year-old medical student.
“It’s not my thing but why not?” echoed a laughing Ute Wegscheider as she pushed her young daughter’s pram. “Maybe I should go check it out with my husband!”
Gerald Adler of Britain’s Kent School of Architecture, who was taking students to see the Secession, said Buechel should have chosen a different site — such as St. Stephen’s Cathedral — if he wanted to make a real splash.
“He’s putting it in a place that’s an accepted venue for avant-garde art, so it loses its effect,” Adler said.
The project runs until April 18.
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On the Net:
Secession: http://www.secession.at/e.html
A man sweeps discarded salad vegetables from the floor at a food market in Vienna, Austria, on Monday May 30, 2011. Vegetables from Spain are suspected of carrying the dangerous E.coli bacteria, which is suspected of killing some people in Germany and has caused many hundreds of people to become ill across Europe. Austria has moved to ban the sale of cucumbers, tomatoes and eggplants that originated from Spain, although Spanish authorities said there is no proof that they are the source of the outbreak.(AP Photo/Ronald Zak)(Credit: AP) 