Miami Herald - Wednesday, June 27, 2001
Shari Rudavsky; srudavsky@herald.com

In an average month, the county health department learns of six cases. Since late May, it has seen 29 cases of the disease, which can cause gastrointestinal distress, fever or jaundice.

Health Department officials believe that the virus is being spread by oral-anal contact during sex. About half of the cases occurred among men in three adjacent zip codes in Fort Lauderdale.

It is often spread by eating contaminated food, which has officials worried about infected food handlers who touch food without thoroughly washing their hands.

"If we don't get this under control, it could balloon even more.

The worry would be if you got a food handler with it, you could spread a lot of cases that way as well," said Dr. James Cresanta, a disease prevention specialist with the Broward County Health Department.

A preventive medicine against the disease exists, but it must be taken within 14 days of infection to have an effect. Because the disease can take between 15 to 50 days after infection to assert itself, health department officials expect physicians to promptly report any cases so they can alert the patient's sexual partners of the increased risk.

That has not been happening with these cases, as doctors have been slow to report them, Cresanta said. "The problem is we're working from way behind," he said.

The Health Department is trying to get the word out to anyone who might have been exposed within the past two weeks to offer them protective immune serum globulin. In addition, they have spearheaded a public information campaign to persuade gay men, considered at risk for contracting the disease, to get vaccinated against it.

But some gay individuals have been slow to respond, said Eston Dunn, health education program manager of the South Florida Gay and Lesbian Community Center, which has hung posters and signs all over the center warning about the risk.

"I haven't seen a sense of urgency. It's just like the AIDS epidemic. Complacency has set in," Dunn said.

Many doctors who treat HIV and AIDs patients recommend that patients receive the relatively new Hepatitis A vaccine. While few people die from Hepatitis A, it can leave a person very ill.

"If there is a vaccine that has potentially zero side effects, why not vaccinate everybody," asked Jerry Ondrusek, an infectious disease specialist at North Broward Medical Center and Coral Springs Medical Center. He has seen no cases among his patients, all of whom have been vaccinated under his direction.

Miami-Dade has not seen a similar outbreak. Typically, the county has about 61 cases every six months. This year, they've had 68, but many of those occurred in children, said Dr. Mary Jo Trepka, director of the Miami-Dade County Department of Health's office of epidemiology and disease control.

Florida has not seen more cases this year than in previous years. Since Jan. 1, 227 cases have been reported to the state Department of Health. Over the past three years 242 cases on average have been reported by this time of year.
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