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The Outbreak Of Acute Gastroenteritis

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Introduction
An outbreak of infection or foodborne illness may be defined either as two or more linked cases of the same illness, or as the situation when the observed number of cases unaccountably exceeds the expected number (Food standard Agency, 2006). However, the World Health Organisation (WHO) defines it as, any disease of an infectious or toxic nature caused by or thought to be caused by the consumption of food or water Norovirus is the most common known cause of infectious intestinal disease in Western Europe and North America [1–3] and one of the leading causes of foodborne outbreaks of acute gastroenteritis [4–9]. It has been estimated that there are over 600,000 cases of norovirus infection in England each year [10], with infection rates peaking during the winter months that lend the disease the initial description “winter vomiting disease” (Mounts et al., 2000 EFSA).
Background
Noroviruses were first recognized in the year 1968 following an outbreak of gastroenteritis at an elementary school in Norwalk, Ohio in the USA (Adler and Zickl,1969). For many years they were known as Norwalk-like viruses (NLV), or as 'small round structured viruses ' (SRSVs), because of their appearance when viewed under an electron microscopy. Norovirus belongs to the family Caliciviridae and is a non-enveloped, single stranded positive RNA virus with a genome tail and a single capsid polypeptide molecular mass (Greenberg,1981). Norovirus have a characteristic surface morphology

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