Abstract: On December 2019, approximately 65 individuals from an Indigenous People (IP) group in the Philippines gathered to celebrate “Halad”, a local term for a feast of thanks giving. Within hours of food consumption, 38 individuals experienced acute abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. It was a coincident that during this time, our group composed of medical health workers and researchers was in the area doing an immersion to study their practices. 4 members of our team also experienced the same symptoms. No one from the patients want to be brought to the hospital since we are at the mountainous far flung area, so our team created a triage area to examine the patients; diagnostic area to collect stool specimen; nursing care area to provide immediate treatment; and evidence team to gather pertinent sample related to the incident. The trace-back investigation implicated that one of the food served during the “Halad” is positive in culture for enterotoxigenic Staphylococcus aureus as the source of contamination. This staphylococcal food poisoning case resulted from effect of food contamination allowing growth and synthesis of staphylococcal enterotoxin A (SEA) was found by ELISA in canned sardines which was added to the ferns to make up a fresh “fern salad” consumed by the people.
Keywords: Staphylococcal Food Poisoning, Enterotoxin A, Indigenous People, Fern salad.
Title: Staphylococcal Food Poisoning in an Indigenous Tribe in the Philippines
Author: Danilo Andro S. Garcia Jr., Gerardo Carmelo B. Salazar
International Journal of Life Sciences Research
ISSN 2348-313X (Print), ISSN 2348-3148 (online)
Research Publish Journals
