Outbreak of Occupational Brucellosis at a Pharmaceutical Factory in Southeast China

Abstract

Brucellosis is an occupational disease affecting workers in butcher shops, the milking and dairy product industry, causing more than 500 000 new cases around the world. As a national statutory B infectious disease in China, morbidity of brucellosis is rapidly increasing in recent years. We report an occupational outbreak of brucellosis infection in a pharmaceutical factory. Exposure was a result of manual operation in the process line, close contact with sheep placentas, insufficient disinfection and repeated using of protective suits and infected by aerosol dissemination. Improved preventive methods, appropriate public health measures and spread of health education would be helpful to prevent the occupational outbreak of brucellosis in future.

Epidemiologically characteristics of human brucellosis and antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of Brucella melitensis in Hinggan League of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China

“…The proportion of students is second only to that of farmers and herdsmen, Mongolian boys have the custom of playing with lambs, which may increase their risk of infection. Moreover, some brucellosis cases were reported in administrative cadres and teachers, who was non-occupational population for brucellosis; this suggests that brucellosis in this region has an expansive trend from farmers and herdsmen to non-occupational, which may be related to changes in livestock infected transfer and dietary structure [28]. Similarly, a study from Iran showed that most patients lived in rural areas, and that 20.8% (17.4-24.2%) of the patients were ranchers and farmers, 16.9% (14.5-19.4%) were students, and 31.6% (27.0-36.2%) were housewives [29].…”

Occupational exposure to Brucella spp.: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…A total of 292 individuals working in slaughterhouses were described as brucellosis-positive in fourteen articles [19,20,23,33,34,[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49]. Most of those individuals were from America (n = 162), Africa (n = 60), and Europe (n = 37) and the minority from Asia (n = 33).…”

“…The main type of pathogen exposure reported was contact with animal fluids, aborted fetus, placenta and viscera. Accidental contact with those materials was described in three studies: in Spain and Ethiopia, 12.26% (13/106) and 48.72% (76/156) of slaughterhouse workers, respectively, reported cutting themselves with dirty sharp blades [45,46], and in China, 100.00% (3/3) of pharmaceutical employees, who worked processing sheep placenta, reported having splashed animal fluids on their faces [47]. The great occurrence of direct contact with biological contaminated fluids aroused the interest of several authors to understand which PPE were used or not by this group of professionals (Table 2).…”

“…The hazard was increased when prophylactic measures were not properly adopted, as highlighted by the low adherence of PPE use, such as gloves, mask, googles, boots and apron (Table 2). In addition, the low educational level of abattoir workers, as well as insufficient knowledge about brucellosis, particularly on its transmission and clinical signs, increases the risk of these professionals becoming infected and reinforce the importance of implementing educational measures to advise about the need to use PPE and to increase the knowledge of brucellosis symptoms and transmission [41,46,47].…”

The Genome Sequence of Brucella abortus Vaccine Strain A19 Provides Insights on its Virulence Attenuation Compared to Brucella Abortus Strain 9-941

“…And B. abortus which infects cattle is the most frequent in brucellosis of the world. Brucella leads to infertility and abortion in infected animals and causes signi cant economic losses [5]. Human infection with brucellosis is usually accompanied by chronic complications resulting from consumption of unpasteurized dairy products and uncooked meat or direct contact with tissues of infected animals.…”