2014 Volume 15 Issue 1 Pages 35-38
We experienced a food-borne norovirus outbreak in the hospital. In the morning of 7 February, 2013, our Certified Nurse Infection Control received reports of the symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea occurring in various divisions in both patients and staffs. The hospital Infection Control Team (ICT) judged this food-borne infection, reported the incident to the regional public health center and closed the hospital's central kitchen. The hospital director subsequently opened a special ICT center which worked as a prevention and staff education center as well as communication center to the regional public health center and mass media. The ICT also organized the daily staff meeting before office hour where all the main staffs were able to know the current status of the infection. Therefore each in-patient and his/her family members could be informed of the condition from their doctors or nurses directly. Since the central kitchen was closed and some of the kitchen staffs were found to be asymptomatic carrier of norovirus, cooking in the hospital was impossible. We served patients with ready-made meal. For the prevention of the recurrence of this accident, ICT examined the kitchen facilities and re-organized the cooking manual. Training of the kitchen staff was also performed by ICT. We did not charge the patients for the meal during the period of outbreak. For the patients who had norovirus symptoms, we also did not charge medical cost during symptomatic period and provided a small sum of money as compensation.
