Today is National Liver Love Day.
There are many types of liver diseases, among which the incidence of hepatitis B is relatively high, and my country was once crowned as a “big country with hepatitis B”. However, with the vigorous popularization of hepatitis B vaccine, my country successfully took off this hat as early as 2 years ago.
But compared with hepatitis B, the big brother of liver disease, hepatitis A, also swept the country in the 1980s and became a huge public health problem at that time.
In 1988, a large-scale hepatitis A epidemic broke out in Shanghai
As early as 1983, there was an outbreak of hepatitis A disease in Shanghai. At that time, due to the market demand for cockles, the government did not completely ban the sale of cockles, but only stipulated that “only fresh, live cockles”.
It is precisely because of this loose policy that it paved the way for the outbreak of the epidemic five years later.
In 1987, a huge “Clam Mine” was accidentally discovered in Qidong, Shanghai, and a large number of Qidong Clams flooded into the Shanghai market.
These cockles, although fresh, have been contaminated with feces from local people and farm animals. In addition, the Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai areas have always loved raw cockles.
Contaminated and thoroughly cooked cockles also provide a channel for the spread of hepatitis A virus.
On January 5, 1988, major hospitals in Shanghai successively admitted patients with food poisoning caused by cockles, and then on January 19, cases of unexplained fever and vomiting gradually increased. Medical resources are quickly overwhelmed.
(Source: Former Shanghai Sanitation and Epidemic Prevention Station)
ShanghaiRuijin, Zhongshan, Renji, Huashan and other hospitals have all exceeded the upper limit. Due to the sudden outbreak of the epidemic, the local people do not understand the transmission route of hepatitis A. , coupled with the Lunar New Year, the hepatitis A epidemic also caused great panic in Shanghai.
(The corridor of the liver disease ward of Huashan Hospital is full of patients)
Hepatitis A patients, their families, and the buildings and communities they lived in were “excluded” for a while, and then the whole of Shanghai was “excluded” from all over the country.
The food produced in Shanghai is sealed or discarded;
Shanghai people staying in other places are always rejected or the answer is always “full”;
Shanghai people were on business trips and went out to eat in restaurants, but they were once rejected by waiters, and even out-of-town canteens were specially separated for accommodation staff in Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang provinces and cities.
The CDC staff then conducted an investigation and found that the culprit behind the hepatitis A epidemic was the cockroach.
Soon, departments and mediaBegin to publicize and popularize the knowledge of hepatitis A prevention and treatment, and the transmission route has also been cut off. Until the end of March, the number of hepatitis A patients gradually decreased.
As of May 13, a total of 310,746 cases had occurred, and 31 had died. In 1988, the cumulative number of patients reached 352,048.
(Shanghai Xuhui District Central Hospital during the 1988 Hepatitis A Outbreak)
Hepatitis A, the largest route of transmission is gastrointestinal infection
The main transmission route of hepatitis A virus is external contact and stimuli, such as food, feces, etc. Patients who touch or eat contaminated water or food are easily infected with hepatitis A virus.
Patients have a variety of unusual symptoms, such as fever, abdominal pain, joint pain, and, in severe cases, jaundice.
Because many patients do not pay much attention to this disease, they will ignore it at the beginning, and will not go to the hospital for examination until the facial yellowing occurs. so that the difficulty of treatment has increased.
(In 1988, Huashan Hospital set up “Clam Clinic”)
The outbreak of hepatitis A also impacted Shanghai’s economy and development
According to epidemiological estimates, in the 1988 epidemic of hepatitis A, the number of infected persons was four times that of the sick patients, which means that 1.5 million people in Shanghai were infected at that time. .
This outbreak is undoubtedly a rare, food-related hepatitis A outbreak in China and around the world.
Because of this hepatitis A outbreak, there were 30,000 fewer tables in Shanghai Spring Festival restaurants in 1988 than in previous years, and the absenteeism rate in most factories exceeded 10%.
(Liberation Army Daily, January 5, 1988)
After the incident, the local government has also begun to do a good job in epidemic prevention, building a new sanitation prevention system, building new urban sewage facilities, and holding food sanitation meeting, and actively promoting hepatitis A vaccine injection.
At the same time, citizens are also encouraged to wash their hands before meals and after using the toilet, do good personal hygiene, and seek medical attention in time if they feel unwell.
The hepatitis A outbreak has also contributed to the legislative work of China’s Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases.
With the improvement of disease surveillance and the popularization of hepatitis A vaccine, by 2017,the incidence of hepatitis A in Shanghai had dropped to 1.16/100,000, compared to 26.07/10 in 1990 million, a full drop of 95.55%.
At the same time, from that day onwards, clams were withdrawn from Shanghainese recipes.
References:
【1】《Watch! This poisonous little seafood once infected 300,000 people in Shanghai”. Chinese Family Doctor Magazine. 2020-04-22
【2】Scientific detection of Shanghai Epidemic Prevention Station shows that Qidong cockles carry hepatitis A virus [N]. People’s Daily, 1988-03-07.
[3] The Ministry of Health announced that the Shanghai Hepatitis A epidemic has accumulated 290,000 cases and 11 deaths. The epidemic has been controlled in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and preventive measures have been taken. Hepatitis A has not formed an epidemic situation [N]. People’s Daily, 1988-03- 22.