Brought Diarrhea From Nepal-II, Follow up

First part of this story is here.

My diarrhea case surprised many health personals and is interesting to them. Also, it was worthy to make news in one of the national daily's in Nepal.

After 4 days I gave stool sample to the Student Health Center, I got a phone call from the health center. According to her one of the stool samples had shown some kind of bacteria and when that becomes clear, I would get another call from health department of the Benton county (where I live) for further investigation. One of my friend, Dr. Shyam, had already told me the process one has to go through in similar case. They had suffered from similar problem some time back. So I knew what was going on.

Vivrio Cholera, a bacteria that causes cholera, was growing slowly on the stool culture. So, student health center notified to Benton county health department and I received a call from Benton county health department. They asked me a number of questions like these:

When was the diarrhea started?

Any other illness associated with this?

As I told them that it started during my flight, they asked details about the flight, airlines, flight number, food in the flight etc

Did you have friends on the plane who had same food and are they fine?

Where did you stay in Nepal?

Any body affected with diarrhea in your family or neighborhood?

These all questions were related to trace the source of the bacteria. And they were concerned about the possible outbreak of diarrhea in the local town where I live. So other questions went like:

Where do you work?
Do you work in restaurant or dining hall?
Do you cook food for your room mates?
Do you share bathroom and restroom?
How are they (roommates), are they fine?

and so on.

The Benton county health department reported this case to Oregon Health department. Dr. Bill Keene, senior epidemiologist, called me couple of times and asked similar questions. According to him, possible source of the bacteria is in Kathmandu. This bacteria has incubation period of 1 to 5 days. But they can't say with 100% confident that its from Kathmandu. They didn't find other passengers on the same flight infected with that bacteria. So its least probable to be the source. On the other hand, there are other (actually many and news reports says that there is the possibility of outbreak) cases on Kathmandu.

Oregon health department reported to center for disease control (CDC) and they send my stool sample to the central lab of CDC. One doctor called me from there with similar questions. They found this case very interesting because most of the diarrhea cases in the united states is caused by virus and this case is by bacteria. According to the doctors, this is the first case in Oregon in 10 years.

Finally, they reported to world health organization (WHO). WHO personals contacted department of epidemiology in Teku, Kathmandu. From there it came into news with the title "America is surprised to see a cholera case".

Here is the link of Nepal Samachar Patra dainik.

Dr Gongal from WHO south and east Asia office at Delhi is in Kathmandu and is interested to deal with this case. It is not a surprising case for developing countries. This is the typical time for cholera in Nepal, the rainy season.

The good thing is I am totally fine now after excreting watery stool for 6 days. I didn't take any medicine for this diarrhea. I told to all these doctors that I am ready and happy to help them. Only one concern for me: American embassy might control to issue visa because of this case. I hope it won't happen.