Health Officials

Hundreds of people who feared they were exposed to hepatitis A at a Wendy's restaurant in Eldersburg lined up for shots at an impromptu clinic at Springfield Hospital Center yesterday.By evening, a long line of cars snaked along the main road on the sprawling hospital campus in Sykesville, where the Carroll County Health Department was offering free injections of immune globulin. The antibody, if given within two weeks of exposure, helps prevent the dangerous, communicable virus that attacks the liver.

State agents raided the headquarters of PrimeHealth Corp. in Lanham yesterday, seizing computers and cartons of office records as part of a broadening corruption probe into the business dealings of former state Sen. Larry Young.State Prosecutor Stephen Montanarelli confirmed late yesterday that the raid took place, but he declined to say why the health maintenance organization was raided or what was seized from the firm, which received a lucrative state contract with help from Young.Armed with search warrants, the agents seized records and computers from PrimeHealth's offices at 9602 Martin Luther King Highway in Lanham.

State and local health officials have concluded that a sick employee who was handling food transmitted a virus to more than 350 guests who dined at Turf Valley Resort and Conference Center in Ellicott City last month.The determination closed a three-week investigation into an outbreak of a Norwalk-like virus that caused vomiting and diarrhea, officials said."This was your common, garden-variety virus that can cause flu-like conditions," said Tori Leonard, state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene spokeswoman.

JUST WHEN it seemed that school and health officials in Howard County were getting their act together in dealing with public health concerns, they blundered badly by blocking access to information for the community.Both departments worked well a week ago to ensure that parents at Worthington Elementary School in Ellicott City were aware that bacterial meningitis may have caused the sudden death of 8-year-old Steven Chilton, a second-grader. One official said school administrators learned from health officers at 3: 20 p.m. that meningitis, which is contagious, may have been a factor.

Carroll County day care operators say health officials have become too strict in interpreting state regulations regarding septic systems, curtailing the number of children new license applicants or existing providers can accommodate.County health officials, however, say their interpretation is already liberal, allowing eight people in a three-bedroom house with a septic system.At issue for day care providers is loss of income; health officials in Carroll say it's a matter of health and environmental safety.

Overwhelmed by public response to a case of hepatitis A at an Eldersburg fast-food restaurant, Carroll County health officials have ordered additional doses of an antibody that helps prevent the liver disease.About 300 people lined up during the first two hours of an impromptu clinic yesterday to receive free shots of immune globulin (IG). On Thursday, 1,118 people received shots at Springfield Hospital Center in Sykesville, health officials said."We had to order more vaccine as a margin of safety," said Dr. Janet Neslen, the county's deputy health officer.

As many as 3,000 people may have been exposed to hepatitis A, a contagious virus that attacks the liver, at a busy Wendy's restaurant in Eldersburg this month, the Carroll County Health Department announced yesterday.Health officials are asking that anyone who ate at the restaurant Sept. 8 to 12 call the department to receive a free shot of immune globulin (IG), which contains antibodies to the virus and can help prevent the disease.Patrons who ate at the restaurant Sept. 1 to 7 also may have been exposed, but the IG shot would not be effective for them.

The syphilis epidemic in Baltimore is prompting city, state and federal health officials to pump nearly three-quarters of a million dollars into efforts to control the problem.Dr. Peter Beilenson, city Health Department director, said yesterday he will use the money to hire more physicians, clinicians and syphilis-case trackers to control the disease that is so rampant here that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta recently ranked Baltimore No. 1 in the country for reported syphilis cases.

An official of a Lanham-based health care firm was questioned for nearly an hour yesterday after delivering a handful of documents to the federal grand jury probing corruption charges against former state Sen. Larry Young.The unidentified representative of PrimeHealth Corp. arrived at the federal court building at 1: 30 p.m. carrying the documents. He emerged from the grand jury room at one point to confer briefly with Thurman W. Zollicoffer Jr., a lawyer representing the firm. Both Zollicoffer and the health-firm official declined to comment.

Hundreds of people who feared they were exposed to hepatitis A at a Wendy's restaurant in Eldersburg lined up for shots at an impromptu clinic at Springfield Hospital Center yesterday.By evening, a long line of cars snaked along the main road on the sprawling hospital campus in Sykesville, where the Carroll County Health Department was offering free injections of immune globulin.The antibody, if given within two weeks of exposure, helps prevent the dangerous, communicable virus that attacks the liver.

City and state health officials reassured an anxious, standing-room-only crowd of elderly residents of Stadium Place on Friday that the Legionnaires' disease that killed one of their number and sickened four others cannot be spread from person to person. Residents of the senior housing community on the former site of Memorial Stadium peppered officials with dozens of questions - many focused on how they could protect themselves from contracting the sometimes-fatal form of pneumonia and whether authorities had responded quickly enough to the outbreak.

City and state officials are scrambling for clues to what caused an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease at a senior living facility on the former site of Memorial Stadium, leaving one person dead and four others sickened. Officials at the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Baltimore Health Department were interviewing those who have fallen ill and planning to test water sources to try to determine the origin of the outbreak at Stadium Place, a retirement community built 10 years ago. Authorities also were informing residents about symptoms so any new cases can be caught early.

A 10th person in Maryland has died of swine flu, state health officials said Tuesday. The person, an adult from Western Maryland, had underlying health problems. As with other deaths related to the H1N1 virus, officials would not release further details. Since the outbreak of the virus in the spring, 217 people in Maryland have been hospitalized and two children have died, one of them a 14-year-old girl with no underlying health problems. Nationwide, 81 children have died of the swine flu, according to figures released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health officials said Monday that they are trying to contain Maryland's first measles outbreak since 2001, after a fourth case was diagnosed in Montgomery County. Since February, three adults and a baby have developed measles, a highly infectious viral disease characterized by a red skin rash. Most Americans are immunized against measles, which has largely disappeared in the U.S. But last year, the number of cases doubled throughout the nation, which health officials attributed mostly to people who traveled overseas and may not be inoculated or have poor immune systems.

Baltimore's aggressive plan to reduce an infant mortality rate exceeding that of many developing countries is a long-overdue response to a health crisis the city has struggled with for years. At 11.3 deaths per 1,000 births, the city's rate is nearly 1 1/2 times that of the state; among African-Americans, the rate is twice as high in some neighborhoods. And despite previous efforts to attack the problem on multiple fronts, Baltimore's high death rates have remained depressingly constant over the years.

A growing number of health officials fear that investigators made a terrible mistake in blaming tomatoes for the sickening of more than 800 Americans, and they increasingly suspect jalapeno peppers, cilantro or some other food commonly found in Mexican restaurants, health officials involved in the investigation say. The salmonella outbreak should be petering out if contaminated tomatoes were the cause, because tomatoes have a limited shelf life and...

Maryland health officials told state lawmakers yesterday that they were taking steps to minimize possible abuse of the addiction treatment buprenorphine as they spend millions to expand its availability. While insisting that misuse is currently not a serious problem, they outlined precautions in an appearance before a House of Delegates committee. These include screening for buprenorphine in overdose deaths, coordinating with police to monitor street sales and supporting a bill that would call for monitoring prescription drugs, including buprenorphine.

Reported chlamydia cases in Maryland jumped by 57 percent from 1997 to 2006, and one state health official called it "the tip of the iceberg" for the often symptomless sexually transmitted disease. Diagnosed chlamydia cases increased in all but Talbot County, and the rate per capita grew in all but Talbot and Worcester counties, according to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. But state and local health officials attribute the increase largely to improved screening methods. "To me, chlamydia is one of these tip-of-the-iceberg things," said Barbara Conrad, the state health department's director of the sexually transmitted diseases program.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Infant mortality has dropped by 18 percent in Afghanistan, in one of the first real signs of recovery for the country five years after the fall of the Taliban regime, health officials said yesterday. "Despite many challenges, there are clear signs of health sector recovery and progress throughout the country," Dr. Muhammad Amin Fatimi, health minister, told journalists here. The number of children who die before their first birthdays has dropped to 135 per 1,000 in 2006 from 165 per 1,000 live births in 2001, according to a countrywide survey by the Johns Hopkins University, he said.

Three Baltimore businesses received notices from city health officials yesterday related to the sale of children's jewelry with high levels of lead. Health officials found four items with high lead levels at the three stores -- Totally Kids, 321 W. Lexington St.; Dollar Tree, 3842 E. Lombard St.; and The Children's Place, 200 E. Pratt St. In December, health officials adopted a regulation prohibiting the retail sale of children's jewelry with lead in metal components in excess of 1,200 parts per million.