Shigella is a germ that causes a disease called shigellosis. Shigella species are aerobic gram-negative bacilli in the family Enterobacteriaceae. Children younger than 5 years are most likely to get shigellosis, but people from all age groups can get this disease. Most people with shigellosis will get better within 5 to 7 days without medical treatment.
Shigellosis are also influenced by nutritional status, and environmental factors affecting transmission such as rainfall and temperature. Shigella infections can occur throughout the year, but in most communities the incidence is highest when the weather is hot and dry. This may be because the scarcity of water limits handwashing and other hygiene measures that reduce transfer of the very small number of bacteria needed to cause infection.
Transmission is fecal-oral including direct person-to person contact. It is most likely to occur in children and those who fail to clean hands thoroughly, including under fingernails after defecation. Transmission occasionally occurs with sexual contact.
Health workers are usually aware of the number of shigellosis cases, because symptoms are severe, and therefore children with Shigella infections are more likely to be brought to hospitals or clinics. Case fatality rates, even in hospitalized cases of dysentery, are six to eight times greater than for watery diarrhea. Dysentery is associated with persistent diarrhea. In rural north India, for example, nearly a third of all persistent diarrheal episodes are dysenteric.
People who are sick with Shigella usually start experiencing symptoms 1 to 2 days after putting something in their mouth or swallowing something that has come into contact with the bacteria. Symptoms of shigellosis may include:
• Diarrhea (sometimes bloody)
• Fever
• Stomach pain
• Feeling the need to pass stool [poop] even when the bowels are empty
During disease epidemics caused by Shigella dysenteriae type 1, as many as one in ten people in affected communities will become infected, and as many as 10 to 15 per cent of these will die.
What is Shigellosis?
