LANCASTER, Ohio – Health officials say the likely source of the botulism outbreak that killed one person and sickened many others at an Ohio church potluck dinner was home-canned potatoes used in a potato salad.
READ MORE: In the Columbus Dispatch
The Ohio Department of Health said Monday that testing has narrowed the source to potato salad served at the April 19 potluck at Cross Pointe Free Will Baptist Church in Lancaster, which is southeast of Columbus.
A 55-year-old woman died, and officials have confirmed 20 other botulism cases, along with 10 suspected cases. A dozen people are still in the hospital. Patients have been treated with a botulism antitoxin provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Botulism is a rare but serious illness caused by a nerve toxin that is produced by certain kinds of bacteria.
According to a report in the Columbus Dispatch, the Rev. Bill Pitts learned about the death of Kim Shaw of Rushville as he raced back to Lancaster from Chicago.
People were texting him that one member after another of his church were heading to Fairfield Medical Center, stricken by what was at the time still some unknown illness.
After he entered Ohio on I-70 he received word that Kim Shaw had died. Pitts had hugged Shaw two days before, on Sunday when the church hosted the potluck.
“I got off to fill up, pulled up to the pump, and cried my heart out,” said Pitts, the church’s pastor for a decade. “It was a terrible, terrible thing that happened.”
State and Fairfield County health officials concluded that the source of the outbreak is likely potato salad made with home-canned potatoes after a laboratory test and interviews with people who attended the potluck.
Sietske de Fijter, chief of the Bureau of Infectious Diseases for the state, said health officials were able to narrow the likely food culprits by interviewing nearly everyone who became ill, as well as those who didn’t, at the potluck.
The common denominator, she said, was home-made potato salad. Lab testing confirmed the presence of botulism.