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You had recently participated in
a discussion on waterborne diseases and some of the symptoms the children had
reminded you of the disease Cryptosporidiosis (crip-toe-spor-id-i-o-sis). You decided to call your local
health director to learn more about this disease. Ms. Blobel, the town health director, told you the disease
can be spread by contaminated drinking water and asked where your Center
obtained its drinking water. Was it
from a well or a water company. After
looking up the records, you discovered your Center's water comes from the
Suburban Water Company. You called
Ms. Blobel again and asked if Suburban had reported any Cryptosporidium in their
water. Ms. Blobel told you the
water companies are not required to measure or report Cryptosporidium levels in
their water. You asked Ms. Blobel if there
have been other reports of gastrointestinal illness or question about such
illness recently. Ms. Blobel
mentions that the Suburban Elementary School had reported six cases of cramps,
vomiting, low-grade fever and diarrhea at the school in the last six months.
The drinking water for the school also comes from Suburban.
The health department was "looking into it".
You did find out from Ms. Blobel that Cryptosporidiosis was made a
reportable disease in Connecticut in 1994 and that the disease could be
diagnosed from a stool sample. You called Brittany's mother and
asked if she would take Brittany to her pediatrician and request a test for
Cryptosporidium. Copyright April, 1997, Edward F. Rossomando
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