E. coli was found in the Azov Sea. Escherichia coli discovered in the Black Sea

https://www.site/2016-08-30/krasnodarskiy_kray_na_grani_ekologicheskoy_katastrofy_iz_za_kishechnoy_infekcii

“I’m completely shocked: why is everyone silent?”

Black Sea resorts in Russia are overwhelmed by intestinal infections

IN Krasnodar region- outbreak of intestinal infection. Tourists complain that the sea is polluted by sewage and algae, and report overcrowded hospitals. Local authorities do not acknowledge the problem: official comments say that there are no mass cases of disease. Meanwhile, the collection of signatures has begun on the Internet for a petition in which Russians ask President Vladimir Putin to save the Russian resort from an environmental disaster.

“It turns out you can’t go to the sea”

“The situation is simply catastrophic! Having been in Adler with a small child for only two days and having swam in the sea, instead of resting, we got an intestinal infection and a trip to the infectious diseases hospital on Kirova 50, which turned out to be overcrowded with vacationers, sick children are even lying in the corridors, there are not enough places! Everyone has the same story: they swam in Adler’s Black Sea, where sewage is dumped and where it’s teeming with coli! People come from all over the country and spend their holidays in the infectious diseases department. Little children and their parents lie under IVs and do not get off the potties! And this is in the post Olympic Sochi, where they did everything for the guests of the Olympics, but for their children they cannot create conditions for safe holiday!,” says the petition, which was published on the website Change.org by Norilsk resident Larisa Yangol. With her petition, she is trying to attract the attention of President Vladimir Putin and the chief sanitary doctor of the Russian Federation, whom Yangol asks to “stop the intestinal infection in the Black Sea.” So far, only 778 people have supported the petition, but the number of signatories is growing.

Social networks and blogs are full of stories from tourists about the epidemic of intestinal infection in major Black Sea resorts: Anapa, Sochi, Gelendzhik and others.

In the public domain you can find hundreds of similar messages about how tourists, after swimming in the sea, suffered from diarrhea and vomiting, waited for hours for an ambulance and spent most of their vacation in the hospital. Mostly parents of preschool children complained about their ruined vacation.

The situation with the incidence of intestinal infections has been observed on the coast for the third year in a row

Perhaps the post of Angela Alekseenko from Petrozavodsk is most widely circulated on social networks. She is indignant that, for the sake of profit, the authorities, doctors and the media are suppressing information about the epidemic on the Black Sea coast. She was vacationing in Sochi with her two-year-old son. After going to the sea, his temperature rose, diarrhea and vomiting began. The baby and his mother were taken by ambulance to the emergency room of the infectious diseases hospital, where they had to wait three hours to see a doctor in the company of other vacationers with similar problems.

“A bunch of parents, all the children in their arms, they are constantly vomiting, they are exhausted and cannot stand on their feet. Poor doctors who don’t have time to do anything try to be kind and understanding. But tired as hell. And today is the fourth day in the hospital, periodically I cry, in complete shock, why everyone is silent,” writes Angela Alekseenko.

According to Alekseenko, 60 children are admitted to the hospital every day with one diagnosis - an intestinal infection.

“It turns out you can’t go to the sea, it’s dirty, children get poisoned, their small, fragile body breaks down! And everyone is silent! Hospitals are overcrowded, people are lying in the corridors, I myself see this nightmare. It’s dirty, stuffy, there’s no refrigerator or microwave in the entire hospital,” the woman is indignant. The ambulance doctors told her that this situation had been happening since the beginning of summer. “Why are you silent? “Then you won’t come to us,” they answer. This is fine? All summer it’s been such nonsense, poor kids are poisoned, someone is vomiting blood, and everyone is sneezing because it’s money!” Alekseenko is indignant. Her post was republished by the media and bloggers, but later for unknown reasons it was deleted from Facebook. the site tried to contact Angela Alekseenko through a social network, but at the time of preparing the material, she did not respond to a personal message.

“They called back from the ambulance and said that the doctors would not come”

Tourists faced similar problems throughout the summer and other resort towns Krasnodar region. As Sverdlovsk resident Denis Stepanchenko, who was vacationing with his family in the village of Vityazevo near Anapa, told the website, the family spent 10 of the 14 days of their vacation in their room due to an intestinal infection that struck the children. Denis Stepanchenko with his wife and two sons (one is 7 years old, the other is 11 months old) arrived in Vityazevo on July 29.

On the second day of rest, after swimming in the sea, the youngest son began vomiting, diarrhea and the temperature rose to 38.5 degrees. Later, the same symptoms began in the eldest son. “At first we treated ourselves, but on the third day we asked the hotel to call an ambulance.” Later, the ambulance called us back and said that the doctors would not come to us, since the child’s temperature was relatively low, and they had a lot of calls even without us,” says the Ural resident. According to him, there is always a queue of about twenty people at pharmacies.

“Everyone has the same symptoms, everyone buys the same medications. The pharmacy understands the situation and doubles the prices,” says the Ural resident.

According to Denis, during his vacation, the ambulance came to the hotel where he was vacationing with his family two or three times every day. “They took small children with their mothers to the hospital. Moreover, everyone began to get sick after visiting the sea,” he says. Denis notes that after his experience, he is unlikely to risk going to the Russian Black Sea coast again. According to him, local residents They say that the situation with the widespread incidence of intestinal infection has been observed on the coast for the third year in a row and always at the end of the holiday season. This is also confirmed by user posts on social networks.

The flight and two-week holiday in a four-star all-inclusive hotel cost Denis Stepanichenko’s family 220 thousand rubles. The family spent another 10 thousand rubles on buying medicines at local pharmacies.

A similar story happened in Gelendzhik with a resident of Yekaterinburg, Ekaterina Shipitsyna, who was vacationing at the resort with three small children, her husband and mother-in-law. “We came for four weeks, rented an apartment, cooked food ourselves, carefully washed all the fruits and vegetables, followed all the rules of hygiene, but nevertheless we got sick,” the mother of many children told the site. According to her, the three-year-old twins fell ill first, and then the one-year-old son. Later, the adults also got sick in turn. The symptoms are the same for everyone: vomiting, weakness, diarrhea, high fever. By the end of the vacation, the children managed to get sick twice.

According to Ekaterina, local residents consider the main cause of illness to be dirty sea water, in which at the end of summer, due to the heat, algae blooms and bacteria multiply. In addition, old-timers point out the lack of centralized sewerage.

Sochi City Hall: the cause of illness is the carelessness of vacationers

More than 3.3 million tourists vacationed in Sochi from January to July 2016, according to an official statement on the municipality’s website. The beaches are 100% occupied. At the same time, the administration’s health department refused to tell the site over the phone how many people were hospitalized with intestinal infections this season. the site sent an official request to the press service of the city administration, but there is no response yet.

At the same time, the city health department emphasizes that over the past six months no cases of mass infectious diseases have been registered in Sochi. According to doctors, in most cases the cause of illness is the carelessness of vacationers themselves, who do not comply with basic sanitary and epidemiological standards: for example, they buy food from street stalls and wash fruit directly in the sea. Officials have even developed a guide for tourists on how to maintain good health during vacation, however, apparently, it does not always save vacationers.

Official reports from the Sochi administration say that the water in the sea meets all necessary standards. According to the press service of the mayor's office, citing specialists from Rospotrebnadzor, this summer the water even became cleaner by about 10% compared to 2015.

The city administration notes that water samples are taken in the resort’s water area twice a week. "At first summer period About one and a half thousand water samples were taken. All of them complied with the established standards, and the maximum permissible concentration was not exceeded,” the press service of the municipality notes.

Also, messages regularly appear on the website of the Sochi City Hall regarding the improvement of local sewerage. One of them says that in 2015 in Sochi “almost 12 thousand unsewered objects were identified, at the beginning of the summer of 2016 there were 2,571 of them left.” Work in this direction continues, according to the city administration.

Ecologist: Sewage and fecal waters flow into the sea

Environmentalists point to a problem with sewerage in the Krasnodar region. “I have been on business trips to Sochi and its suburbs many times and have seen with my own eyes the sewage flowing into the sea. This situation is typical for Russia and for the villages of Sochi. Sewage and fecal waters flow into the sea. The runoff ends up in local rivers, which flow into the sea. People often swim on the beaches where the runoff comes out,” says Vitaly Bezrukov, head of the My Planet charitable environmental foundation.

According to him, the sanitary situation at the resort is also deteriorating due to the construction of mini-hotels on the site where previously there were only small private houses. “For example, there used to be a one-story house in which, say, four people lived; there was relatively little waste. Then a five-story mini-hotel was built on this site. Accordingly, the volume of sewage drains increases significantly, and they are still being discharged into the sea,” explains the ecologist. In addition, according to him, household chemicals (phosphorus-containing washing powders, detergents, etc.) enter the sea with these wastewater, which gives rise to the bloom of blue-green algae, which in turn contributes to the proliferation of pathogenic bacteria.

In Mariupol (Ukrainian town), an epidemiological situation regarding an outbreak of acute intestinal diseases has been recorded. This information appeared on the official website of Rospotrebnadzor the day before. All checks were carried out by the Donetsk Regional Laboratory Center of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.

A message on the Rospotrebnadzor website indicates that at the moment Eighty cases of acute intestinal infection have already been officially recorded in Mariupol. All these cases were recorded between the sixth and twelfth of July. If we compare these disease indicators with 2017, they increased by more than forty-one percent. Rospotrebnadzor emphasized that sixty of the victims were children. About thirty percent of the victims noted that the disease came after swimming in the Azov Sea.

According to the results of a laboratory study, out of eighteen vacationers on the beach, eleven swam on the beach near the Tourist Hotel, one swam near the Azov Shipyard, the rest rested on the Left Bank beach.

E. coli found on four out of five beaches

It is worth noting that at the beginning of this month, water was taken from the beaches to study microbiological indicators. The research results showed that there are unauthorized sewer drains within the city. Dismantling of these drains is not carried out due to the lack of appropriate equipment and technical support. On the Fourth of July, laboratory staff discovered multiple levels of lactose-positive E. coli in the water. Sea of ​​Azov. Water was collected from five beaches, four of which were found to have an intestinal infection. The official website of Mariupol states that for several weeks in a row, sewerage has been discharged into the Sea of ​​Azov within the city limits, as pipes in the city have burst.

Government Russian Federation asks citizens of the country to take this information into account before planning their vacation, so as not to harm their health and not spoil their vacation. Have a safe and enjoyable holiday!

Resorts on the Black Sea coast have become incredibly popular over the past few years. Most Russian citizens prefer to spend their holidays on the Black Sea. Pleasant climate, picturesque nature, warm gentle sea, wide beaches coastline and reasonable prices for holidays are what attracts modern tourists.

Recently it became known that E. coli was discovered in the Black Sea. This news literally turned the whole idea of ​​a pleasant holiday upside down and became the cause of mass anxiety, almost panic. Many of those who had already purchased vouchers and tickets began to refuse them, not wanting to spend their entire vacation in a hospital bed. So what do real reviews say on this issue? Was it really discovered in the Black Sea or was it all the machinations of attackers? Let's take a closer look at this issue.

Tourist dissatisfaction

Tourists spending their holidays at resorts on the Black Sea coast are concerned about the sanitary condition of the region. The petition about E. coli in the Black Sea is the fruit of their collective work. So they complain that after taking water procedures, that is, banal swimming in sea water, they have to become another patient in overcrowded medical institutions. And it’s all because of E. coli in the Black Sea. Vomiting, weakness, diarrhea, loss of strength and a fairly high body temperature - all these symptoms are present to varying degrees in patients at the local hospital.

Hospitals are really overcrowded, patients are lying in the corridor, and all this is in Olympic Sochi, which was literally revived from the ashes, in which all the necessary conditions were created for family vacation. Children are at risk; they are primarily affected by E. coli in the Black Sea. Numerous reviews from tourists and vacationers indicate dirt on the beaches, widespread unsanitary conditions, and the presence of waste and sewage water in the sea. If you look at the reviews of tourists, you will probably find information in each of them about disgusting health, vomiting, and terrible pain after the first contact with water. There is no doubt that E. coli was discovered on the Black Sea coast. Another thing is what are the reasons for such a widespread infection, its massive and active spread, and whether measures will be taken to stabilize the situation.

Of course, not everyone can afford expensive foreign resorts. On the other hand, why go somewhere if our country, due to its profitable geographical location has its own exit to warm sea. Every year, hundreds of thousands of tourists from different parts of the country vacation at the resorts of the Krasnodar Territory; military personnel who, due to their profession, do not have the right to leave the Russian Federation, spend their vacation here. We are all interested in ensuring that our resorts create the necessary conditions for a complete, most comfortable and, most importantly, safe holiday.

Possible reasons

The authorities speak rather restrainedly on this issue, trying to maintain calm in the region. Meanwhile, local hospitals continue to receive complaints from tourists and local residents.

Why is there E. coli in the Black Sea? What caused the mass poisoning of vacationers? Are there methods to stop the spread of infection in the region? Rospotrebnadzor presented a report on the above survey of water on the Black Sea coast of Sochi and Adler. According to him, it was not found in the sea; therefore, the cause of such a massive epidemic could be anything, but not an infection. Of course, the authorities refer to overcrowding of the beaches, unsanitary conditions, and non-compliance with basic hygiene requirements by vacationers.

E. coli in the Black Sea may appear as a result of the active discharge of waste and sewage water and garbage into sea water. If you have ever vacationed on Black Sea resorts Russia during the season probably had the opportunity to appreciate all this “splendor”.

How does infection occur?

Disinterested parties, after their own independent examination, have revealed that E. coli is constantly present in the Black Sea. August is the peak season when infection is widespread. It is at this time of year that local hospitals become overwhelmed with patients.

So, it was possible to reveal that most often infection occurs after direct contact with sea ​​water, namely swallowing it while bathing. At risk are children aged two years and older, who, due to their age, find it difficult to observe basic protective and hygiene measures. That is why children are frequent patients in the infectious diseases department of local hospitals. As you know, treating an infection in a child has a number of difficulties, can take a long time and lead to serious consequences.

So, annual problems with the sea, or rather the state of sea water, begin at the beginning of the season - June, when the temperature begins to gradually rise. It is under such conditions that the infection begins to appear and subsequently actively spread. The picture is complicated by breakwaters that contribute to water stagnation, as well as the lack of a sewerage system in Sochi, as a result of which all wastewater is sent straight to the sea.

Why Russian resorts

Of course, all tourists and vacationers are interested in the geography of the spread of infection. We all know from our school geography course that the Black Sea belongs not only to the Russian Federation; at least Turkey and Bulgaria offer their guests to visit the Black Sea. E. coli (where it is not present, epidemics do not occur), however, is found only in our country. Why does information about infection come from Russian resorts? These are the questions that modern tourists ask.

According to experts on this matter, E. coli is a bacterium that can be found in any environment. That is why not a single resort with a massive concentration of vacationers during the season can completely protect itself from such a nuisance. Another thing is that E. coli in the Black Sea (2016 was the year when the current sanitary situation was declared catastrophic) is a consequence of water contamination with feces, processed products, and wastewater. And all these illegal emissions occur again within our state. Here is the answer to the question why E. coli was discovered in the Black Sea.

Moreover, local authorities are trying to squeeze the maximum out of resorts during the season. This is evidenced by the overcrowding of beaches, hotels, inns and holiday homes. Of course, high air temperature promotes the spread of infection, which leads to such a reaction.

A little about the infection

For some tourists, the information that E. coli was found in the Black Sea means nothing. They understand nothing about medicine, have no idea what an infection is, what area of ​​the human body it affects, how it is transmitted. That is why sometimes they cannot identify its presence in their body.

Non-pathogenic varieties of E. coli are part of the intestinal microflora and, accordingly, are present in the body of every person. Pathogenic strains cause infectious and inflammatory diseases, most often of the gastrointestinal tract. They produce enterotoxins that cause diarrhea.

About symptoms

Symptoms of infection include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, weakness, and fever. Among the main causes of infection, experts identify failure to comply with basic hygiene standards. At the same time, infection often occurs at resorts during mass gatherings of people.

Treatment

After E. coli was found in the Black Sea, local hospitals and clinics do not stop receiving complaints from vacationers. The infectious diseases departments are literally overcrowded, people are even lying in the corridor on the floor. E. coli has become a big problem in the Black Sea. You should not self-medicate. It is difficult to cope with an infection without the help of doctors; it is better to consult a specialist immediately after detecting the first signs of the disease. Most often, antibiotics, absorbent drugs based on activated carbon, for example, and probiotics are used for therapy.

Fighting the epidemic

Of course, without the intervention of local authorities it is unlikely that the problem will be solved and eradicated. The main problem of the resort is the lack of a unified sewer system. Sochi was put in order, landscaped, some of its areas were literally rebuilt, but the issue with the sewerage system remains open. And all this happens in the main resort and tourist center a country visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. Of course, under such conditions, sewage and sewage water flow into the sea in unlimited quantities. If you remember your school geography course, you will probably note that the Black Sea, from a sanitation point of view, is not located in the most favorable way, but all because the water in it is renewed at a negligibly low rate - in most cases it stagnates. And under the influence of sweltering heat, it becomes a real hotbed of infections, including intestinal ones.

Great attention should be paid to the tourists themselves, or rather, to accustom them to comply with basic standards and hygiene requirements. First of all, it should be prohibited to sell on local beaches drinks, food: numerous studies have found that it is while eating on the beach with dirty hands that infection can occur. It is necessary to eat only in trusted establishments, avoiding all contact with locally produced products presented on the beach.

How to protect yourself from infection

How to go to the sea without catching an intestinal infection? This question is one of the most pressing today, because not everyone is ready to give up their summer vacation.

So, first of all, at resorts you should take care of hygiene, take a shower after each sea swim, cleansing your skin. A shower not only helps to wash off sea salt from the body, but also removes all contaminants that are definitely present in the water to one degree or another. It is here, at sea, that you should be more attentive and demanding about everything that you eat, what your children eat, be sure to wash your hands before every meal, use sunscreen and spend more time in the fresh air, trying to find a secluded place. Agree, tourists who vacation on the same Black Sea, but choose for their leisure time distant from the center, more secluded, sometimes wild places, almost never receive complaints. Tourists who go to the sea at the height of the season, when the beaches are simply crowded, complain.

What to do for those who have already bought tickets

If you have already purchased vouchers, but are concerned about information about the detection of an infection on Black Sea coast, no need to panic. E. coli in the Black Sea (whether it’s 2016 or another year, it doesn’t matter) is not uncommon. It should be understood that for resort towns in sweltering heat this is the norm. Another thing is how you will feel about it. Don't be afraid or give up on your planned trip. Look: even after numerous warnings, people still continue to come to Sochi and Adler.

You just need to remember a few simple rules:

• avoid swimming during extreme heat - it is under the influence of high air temperatures and prolonged heating of water in the sea near the shore that bacteria begin to accumulate in huge quantities. It’s better to wait a little and go into the sea when the air temperature returns to normal;
• try, if possible, not to swallow water while bathing, explain this to children who are at risk;
• Never use sea water to wash fruits and vegetables;
• observe hygiene standards;
• After each contact with sea water, be sure to wash your hands with soap;
• understand that coastal areas are not intended for urination; there are specially designated places for this - toilets.

Summing up

Of course, it is stupid to deny the presence of infection in the Black Sea when the region’s hospitals are simply overcrowded with infected tourists. However, if each of us takes control of our health and follows simple rules for staying at resorts, we will be able to reduce the likelihood of infection significantly. Of course, government agencies must intervene in the problem, carry out all the necessary measures to eliminate the source of infection, develop a sewerage project, monitor the condition of the beaches and food in the resort area. Only joint efforts aimed at eliminating the problem will lead to maximum results.