Free Republic

Portland, Oregon has a serious homeless problem and now it’s about to get worse. Much worse. The disease of Shigella is spreading in the city, mostly through the homeless population, and to make matters worse, it spreads in a disgusting way, through fecal matter. Aside from the ethical matter of allowing people to live on the street, one of the biggest issues is the threat to public health. This is why you don’t want a large population of people living in tents and using streets as a bathroom. FOX News reports: Portland health officials report waste-borne illness rampant among city’s...

Australian researchers are sounding the alarm over cases of a highly infectious intestinal illness that appear to be resistant to all forms of standard oral antibiotic treatment. The disease is called shigellosis, a form of dysentery. So far, most cases have involved gay and bisexual men in the Australian state of Victoria, the researchers said.

Recent outbreaks of an unpleasant intestinal illness in Massachusetts, California and Pennsylvania are due to a drug-resistant version of a bacteria that causes travelers' diarrhea, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned this week. Since May 2014, Shigella sonnei bacteria that have shown resistance to the antibiotic ciprofloxacin have sickened 243 people across 32 states and Puerto Rico, the federal agency said. "Research by the CDC found that the drug-resistant illness was being repeatedly introduced as ill travelers returned and was then infecting other people in a series of outbreaks around the country," the CDC explained. Shigellosis is often...

A drug-resistant intestinal illness called Shigellosis is spreading in the US for the first time, according to a CDC report released today... People infected with Shigellosis go through painful bouts of watery or bloody diarrhea, abdominal pain, and fever. It spreads quickly from person to person through food and recreational water, such as pools...But over the last year, international travelers returning to the US have repeatedly introduced the pathogen into the country.