Salmonella Food Poisoning Outbreak at a School in Kaohsiung County in 2010

From the dawn of July 5, 2010, many students at School X began having food poisoning-like symptoms, such as fever, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, and diarrhea. In order to find out the source of this food poisoning outbreak, as well as to provide preventive recommendations, we conducted a retrospective outbreak investigation on students and employees who were at school on the day before the outbreak. This study was based on self-reported questionnaires. The response rate was 93.3% (475/509). The analysis of data (male 462, female 13) showed the range of age is from 18 to 33, and the median is 19. There were 64 people matched with the case definition, and the main clinical symptoms were as follows: fever (n=54, 84.4%), abdominal cramps (n=48, 75%), headache (n=40, 62.5%), diarrhea (n=24, 37.5%), nausea (n=17, 26.6%), chills (n=15, 23.4%), and vomiting (n=12, 18.8%).