5. Outbreaks
Have you ever heard of stomach bugs that takedown entire communities? You may have recently recovered from a bout of gastroenteritis, and run into neighbors or friends in your community that tell you, “a bug is going around.”
In reality, the chances are that the “bug” causing the outbreak of stomach flu or gastroenteritis, comes from the same source – your local supermarket or favorite restaurant in your neighborhood. Hundreds of people handle your food on its way to the supermarket shelves, and if any of them have a bacterial or viral infection that causes gastroenteritis, they can inadvertently infect hundreds or thousands of other people.
Another possible source of outbreaks – are nursery schools. Children have weaker immune systems than adults or adolescents. As a result, they tend to pick up infections easily from others. If one of the children at your kid’s nursery school experiences infection with gastroenteritis bacteria or viruses, the chances are they’ll transmit it to every child at the school – and then the children pass it to their parents and siblings who infect other members of the community.