FOUR-year-old Katie Shaw spent more than two weeks in agony from salmonella poisoning before her parents were told what the problem was.

Donna and David Shaw then only found out the truth from the Pendle Environmental Health Department investigating a link with a local dairy and an outbreak of salmonella.

Now the East Lancashire Health Authority has come under fire for not releasing details of the outbreak in Burnley and Pendle sooner.

The Shaws, of Wheatley Lane Road, Barrowford, have called in a solicitor to give them legal advice about taking possible action.

In a Press release yesterday, the authority confirmed 23 cases of salmonella in the Burnley and Pendle areas in the last three weeks linking the outbreak to a particularly milk supplier.

Although other sufferers were told of the cause and treated for salmonella, little Katie was being given Calpol - a child's form of pain relief medicine - and lots of liquids.

Donna said: "She started at lunchtime on October 20 suffering from diarrhoea and stomach pains.''

An on-call doctor visited the house twice over the weekend and Donna was taken to Burnley General Hospital for tests on the Sunday. She continued to receive treatment at home for a gastric "bug'' but it was not until Monday of this week that the family heard the truth from a member of Pendle Environmental Health department.

Donna said: "Katie was one of three girls who apparently picked up the salmonella from milk supplied to a nursery.

"The other two girls got their results. They were treated and are back at the nursery. But somehow we seemed to have been passed by.''

Donna said: "It has been a terribly worrying time for us. Katie was very lethargic, running a very high temperature and in terrible pain. Some of the time she was literally screaming in pain.

"We also have an 11-year-old son, Thomas, and had he got it God only knows what might have happened.'' Frank Clifford, chairman of Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale Community Health Council, said he was not happy that news of the outbreak was withheld for three weeks until it was over.

He said the public was intelligent enough to receive that kind of information and to be given advice on what to do when symptoms occurred. To delay giving out information for three weeks was wholly inadequate, he said.

Consultant in Communicable Disease Control Dr Roberta Marshall said it was always difficult to decide when the public should be told but that general practitioners in Burnley and Pendle had been informed at an early stage to consider salmonella if anyone was complaining of diarrhoea.

Even now it was not possible to say definitely what the cause of the outbreak was.

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