Germany 'Struggling To Cope' With E.coli

German hospitals are struggling to cope with the number of people with E.coli, a health minister has admitted - as a former patient speaks out about the problems.

Daniel Bahr said that some hospitals had been moving patients with less serious illnesses in order to handle the surge of people with the deadly strain of the bacteria.

"We are facing a tense situation with patient care," Mr Bahr told a German newspaper.

The admission comes as one woman has been talking about her experience after she was admitted to hospital with E.coli.

Nicoletta Pabst, a 41-year-old from Hamburg, said: "All patients with suspected E.coli were led to a separate location.

"When I arrived, there were at least 20 other people and more kept coming in.

"All of us had diarrhoea and there was only one male and one female toilet."

After waiting for three hours, she was sent home because her blood levels did not indicate that she had kidney failure.

Her condition worsened overnight so the next day she was readmitted and kept in isolation for a week.

Her children were told to stay away from school but have been told they can now return.

She said she is still unsure how she contracted E.coli: "We ate salad of course, we ate strawberries, I ate meat, I don't know...

"I only know we did not eat outside the house the whole week before.

"And, we as family generally ate the same things, and in spite of that, or luckily, it only hit me."

Suspicion has fallen on raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce as the source of the germ, but nobody has yet been able to say exactly where it has come from.

Some reports suggest a restaurant or festival may be the source.

One local newspaper in the port town of Luebeck, 40 miles (60km) northeast of Hamburg, said many people became ill after eating at the Kartoffel-Keller (Potato Cellar).

One German woman died and eight tourists from Denmark were among those infected, the Luebecker Nachrichten said.

The proprietor Joachim Berger said: "It was like a blow to the head when I heard the news.

"We had everyone here tested and everything was disinfected. I paid for the tests myself because safety is important for our guests and employees," he said.

"The restaurant is not to blame," Werner Solbach, a microbiologist at University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein, told the Luebeck newspaper.

"However, the supply chain could give us important clues about how the pathogen was passed along."

The restaurant's suppliers and those to street vendors at the Hamburg Port Festival, which took place at the beginning of May, are also being investigated.

Cases of E.coli began to rise just after the festival, attended by over one million people, ended on May 9.

The illness has killed at least 19 people in Europe and made more than 2,000 people ill in 12 countries - all of whom had been travelling in northern Germany.

Sweden has reported over 50 cases, including one death, and around 14 people in the UK are being treated.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said the strain is rare and has been seen in humans before, but never in this kind of outbreak.

Many of those infected have developed the disease haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), a potentially deadly complication that can affect the kidneys.

Doctors in Germany have had to appeal for blood donations to help with the treatment of E.coli patients.