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WSLH Featured in 2008 Wisconsin Homeland Security Report

MADISON – The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene’s (WSLH) emergency preparedness and training activities are featured in the 2008 Wisconsin Homeland Security Report presented to Governor Jim Doyle on Sept. 17, 2008 by Brigadier General (WI) Donald P. Dunbar, Adjutant General for Wisconsin.

The annual report highlights some of the major accomplishments made by state agencies this past year to ensure Wisconsin’s preparedness measures are at the highest level.

WSLH highlights in the 2008 Homeland Security Report include the training the WSLH has provided to hospital and clinic laboratories and HazMat teams statewide, as well as the multi-agency training and exercises in which WSLH staff have collaborated.

The report also features this recap of a multi-state E. coli O157:H7 outbreak, which laboratory scientists from the WSLH worked with the state’s clinical laboratories and epidemiologists at the WI Division of Public Health and the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention to contain (from page 49 of the report):

Brief Summary of Event
On January 7th, 2008, a cluster of five E. coli O157:H7 infections was detected through PulseNet, a national laboratory-based foodborne pathogen surveillance system. Four patients from Wisconsin and one patient from California were culture-positive for the same rare strain of E.coli O157:H7.

 

Event Response
To investigate common risks between the cases, a foodborne epidemiologist at the Wisconsin Division of Public Health contacted an epidemiologist at the California Department of Public Health. By examining food history questionnaires administered routinely in both states to persons diagnosed with E. coli O157:H7, the epidemiologists noted that the California case and some of the Wisconsin cases reported eating hamburger from the same national restaurant chain. Further investigation determined that each restaurant associated with human cases had received ground beef from the same Minnesota firm.

 

The use of genetic fingerprinting is a powerful new tool in public health surveillance that can link cases of infectious disease across wide geographic areas, improving the ability to detect and respond to disease outbreaks. Prior to the existence of PulseNet, it is unlikely that these geographically dispersed cases in Wisconsin would have been recognized as a cluster, let alone linked to an isolated case halfway across the country.

 

The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene is an award-winning member of the PulseNet network and routinely conducts DNA fingerprinting on all E. coli O157:H7 isolates. Part of Wisconsin’s success can be attributed to the high level of participation among clinical laboratories, who voluntarily forward over 90% of E. coli O157:H7 isolates to the state. Equally important is the close relationship between state laboratory scientists and epidemiologists at the Wisconsin Division of Public Health.

 

Within days of detecting the multi-state cluster in PulseNet and with only six culture-confirmed human cases reported nationally, this investigation prompted the restaurant chain to stop serving the suspect ground beef. On January 12, five days after the multi-state cluster was first detected, the United States Department of Agriculture announced a voluntary recall of the implicated ground beef product.

 Please see the following links for more information:

2008 Wisconsin Homeland Security Report (PDF)

News release from Governor Jim Doyle’s office