© Matthias Schrader/The Associated Press
"Don't eat your salad, it's not good for you," parents in Germany tell their children these days, in a bizarre reversal of the usual healthy diet sermon. To blame is a bacterial epidemic that has killed 15 people in Germany as well as one woman in Sweden and continues to roll across northern Europe.
Officials from the Robert Koch Institute, a respected German health science facility, warned that further deaths are likely.
Scientists suspect the outbreak is linked to vegetables contaminated with the enterohaemorrhagic E.coli bacterium but they haven't located the exact source.
The first cases were reported in Hamburg, Germany, and the disease, which can cause fever, bloody diarrhea and kidney failure, has since spread across the continent. There have been dozens of confirmed cases in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria and Britain.
