Hong Kong: Legionnaire's Disease

[Sharpe]

I write this not because Legionnaire's is a 'pandemic threat'--it usually only affects old people with a long history of smoking and alcohol consumption who breathe in bacteria from old air conditionining units or saunas. Why it is affecting all these young supposedly healthy people all of a sudden in Hong Kong is a mystery to me (and worrisome too for what it may mean is actually going on).

http://www.news.gov.hk/en/category/healthandcommunity/060906/html/060906en05006.htm
<table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="430"> <tbody><tr><td class="theme_news_header"> Man ill with Legionnaires' disease </td> </tr> <tr> <td>

</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="theme_text" align="left" valign="top">

The Centre for Health Protection has confirmed a case of Legionnaires' disease involving a 33-year-old Yuen Long man, the 13th case recorded this year.

He came down with fever, cough and shortness of breath on September 1. He was admitted to Tuen Mun Hospital September 4 and is stable. He has no recent travel history and his family members have no symptoms.

Eleven cases of Legionnaires' disease were reported last year. </td></tr></tbody> </table>

 

[hawkeye]

Re: Hong Kong: Legionnaire's Disease

With my following comment, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth Sharpe...this is a question open to the world.

Is it possible that we are reaching the point where diagnosis of disease(s) isn't being deteremined appropriately, thus putting many others at risk?

Are health officials just guessing what people by merely looking at them and saying to themselves "hmmm...this looks like such-n-such disease...that must be what it is...nurse write that down on the chart"

Are we approaching the boiling-point?

 

[Sharpe]

Re: Hong Kong: Legionnaire's Disease

My honest opinion is that in many parts of the world, especially in much of the southern hemisphere, that is how people have been diagnosing disease for millenia. The ability to actually test for specific diseases is a very new thing, only able to be done in wealthy medical centers, with expensive equipment, materials, refrigeration, and especially people with graduate training. Everywhere else it is done only by clinical diagnosis, unless there is a very strange outbreak, in which samples are sent to a medical center and results sent back. In a place like Hong Kong, however, they have the tools and the resources to identify diseases like Legionnaire's, and so they know what it is. The only reason I posted it was because the age does not match the disease. Young people get Pontiac Fever, but anyway, I think you get the point. Good question. We're far from the boiling point. The water is still only tepid.

With my following comment, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth Sharpe...this is a question open to the world.

Is it possible that we are reaching the point where diagnosis of disease(s) isn't being deteremined appropriately, thus putting many others at risk?

Are health officials just guessing what people by merely looking at them and saying to themselves "hmmm...this looks like such-n-such disease...that must be what it is...nurse write that down on the chart"

Are we approaching the boiling-point?

 

[hawkeye]

Re: Hong Kong: Legionnaire's Disease

Thank for your reply Sharpe. I never really stopped to think that testing resources would be so limited in other countries, I guess they're doing the best they can do.

-Hawkeye

 

[Sharpe]

Re: Hong Kong: Legionnaire's Disease

Thank for your reply Sharpe. I never really stopped to think that testing resources would be so limited in other countries, I guess they're doing the best they can do.

-Hawkeye

It's not so much that they don't have the money, they do. It's that they don't have the scientists and the knowhow. If you gave me $5000 and a few pieces of equipment like a laptop, sequencing software, a PCR machine and a handful of chemicals, I could test for bird flu too. It wouldn't even be very hard to do. I'd still have time to do other things too. But I have an undergraduate degree in biology, I have two years of medical school training, two years of lab experience and am taking graduate school classes in molecular biology. These are not random things you can find everywhere.