Tainted Food Kills Two at Nursing Home

Two elderly patients have died and dozens of others have taken ill during a food poisoning outbreak at a Pomona nursing home, county officials disclosed Tuesday.

Los Angeles County coroner’s spokesman Bob Dambacher said Denise Louetta, 89, and Laurencia Spurlock, 78, died from eating contaminated food served at the Towne Avenue Convalescent Hospital in Pomona on Aug. 11.

Health officials said 47 of 88 patients and seven of 89 staff members have taken ill with symptoms of nausea and diarrhea. Two patients and two staffers became sick on Monday or Tuesday of this week in an apparent recurrence of the earlier attack.

Home Cited

Since the outbreak, health officials have cited the 94-bed nursing home for deficient food preparation practices that included serving outdated mayonnaise as well as milk that had been sitting too long without refrigeration. The temperature gauge on the dishwasher was reported to be broken and food preparation areas were not kept clean.

Health inspectors also cited the nursing home for failing to promptly report the food-poisoning outbreak. The nursing home notified the health department three days after the outbreak, rather than within the required 24 hours, said Marvin Brandon, the county health official in charge of nursing home inspections.

Glen Crume, administrator of the nursing home, said that he was not aware that food poisoning had been found to have caused the deaths of the two patients. He denied any problems with food handling--either past or present.

But health officials in the county’s San Gabriel Valley office said an inspection of the nursing home last December had unearthed 21 deficiencies, including a dirty kitchen floor, cupboards and windows. The partition in a double sink was not sealed off, allowing dirty water to mix with clean water. The nursing home was ordered to correct the deficiencies.

Dr. Shirley Fannin, associate deputy for the county Health Services Department’s disease control program, said the bacterium responsible for the illness has not been pinpointed. But she said she suspects the culprit is a bacterium that incubates in unrefrigerated food left long enough at a certain temperature.

No “Shortcuts”

Of the outbreak, she said, “This can happen almost anyplace, which is why we keep pounding at people about food handling. When feeding 50 people, you can’t afford to take any shortcuts.”

Occasionally, Fannin said, food poisoning outbreaks have occurred in nursery schools, day camps, hospitals or during picnics “where people aren’t used to preparing (large quantities) of food.”

The important point to stress, she added, is that the organism is most likely not a virulent one that ordinarily causes death, “but in a fragile (elderly) population it can push them over the line.”

Louetta and Spurlock died shortly after they were hospitalized Aug. 12. The cause of death in both cases was initially listed as a swollen colon. But after an autopsy, the county coroner determined that the women had died “due to bacterial food poisoning due to ingestion of contaminated food.”

Families of the victims could not be reached, and nursing home personnel discouraged a reporter from interviewing patients.

Patients Isolated

Crume said that afflicted patients had been isolated from the others and that the nursing home was not accepting any new patients at this time.

Times staff writer Jesse Katz contributed to this story.