4 Staffers at Hospital Infected by Hepatitis A

More than 200 workers at Ventura County’s public hospital have been inoculated after a recent outbreak of hepatitis A infected four employees and an infant in the neonatal intensive care unit, authorities said Friday.

The employees--three nurses and a respiratory therapist--became ill in September after treating a baby seriously ill from other diseases. Tests then showed the baby had been infected with hepatitis A through a blood transfusion, officials said. The source of the infected blood was identified and all remaining blood destroyed, they said.

The Ventura County Medical Center employees apparently were contaminated by feces when changing the child’s diapers. They then spread the virus to their intestines by not washing properly before eating or touching their mouths, hospital Administrator Samuel Edwards said. Hepatitis A is often spread through fecal matter in food or water.

The disease cluster emerged in early September. Hospital employees were notified, 200 to 300 who were possibly exposed were inoculated, and the hospital has been on heightened alert ever since, Edwards said.

Three of the workers are back on the job after weeks of illness, and the baby has gone home, he said.

“We think we’re beyond this, but the virus has an incubation period of six weeks, so the precautions are ongoing,” Edwards said. “It’s just careful hand washing. And we haven’t had any potlucks in the hospital recently.”

Hand scrubbing for 15 seconds is enough to kill the virus, experts say. Hepatitis A is a relatively mild form of a virus that inflames the liver. Unlike deadly hepatitis B and C, this form does not persist after the initial infection, and is not linked to cancer or cirrhosis of the liver. And it causes far fewer deaths, authorities said.

Symptoms of hepatitis A are vomiting, mild fever, fatigue, nausea, jaundice and aching muscles.

County epidemiologist Marilyn Billimek said she knows of no local death from hepatitis A during the last 25 years.

“It’s a light disease in children and it can be a light disease in adults,” she said. “But [in this case] one person lost two weeks’ work, another lost a month’s work and a third has been off for six weeks, so it can be real serious.”

Public notice is not required in such cases, authorities said, because the public was not exposed. New patients should not be concerned, Edwards said, because “hygiene is pretty good in a hospital.”

“The truth is most of us have already had hepatitis A without even knowing it,” he said. “We just get down for a couple of days, and don’t even pay any attention to it. Hepatitis A is generally not a dangerous disease.”

The hepatitis outbreak was discovered in the first week of September, when a nurse became ill, Billimek said. Within a week, three employees were sickened. And a fourth fell ill in the third week of September.

“When one person comes down and then another, look to their family and friends to see where it’s coming from,” Edwards said. “Usually this occurs at schools, boys clubs or churches. Then we tested the baby, who didn’t show any signs of it, and sure enough that was it.”

The baby, who left the hospital by the end of September, was immediately isolated, Edwards said. Precautions to prevent any further infection will stay in place until Nov. 11, Billimek said.

The hospital’s five hepatitis cases make up one-sixth of the 30 reported in all of Ventura County in 1999, she said.

Although cases are relatively few, Billimek recommended that residents be vaccinated against the virus. The disease is often spread through eateries, where workers who have contracted it through trips to foreign countries, prepare the food, she said.