5 from Va. contract disease in El Salvador

Members of Virginia mission groups that traveled to El Salvador this year developed a lung disease usually caused by exposure to bird droppings.

A Virginia Department of Health official said the episode is a reminder for people to be aware of health risks when working in areas where particular illnesses are more prevalent.

Groups from Pennsylvania and Virginia affiliated with the mission traveled separately on three occasions to the Central American country to renovate a church. Public health investigators believe that while digging, sweeping and cleaning up they were exposed to fungal spores that cause the lung disease histoplasmosis.

Histoplasmosis, which can cause flulike illness and shortness of breath, is also prevalent in the middle part of the United States.

A write-up on the outbreak of the lung disease in 20 of 33 mission workers is in a recent issue of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publication.

Five of the 20 sickened were from Virginia. A state health official said they are residents of health districts in the central, southwestern and northwestern parts of the state.

Katie Kurkjian, an epidemiologist at the Virginia Department of Health, declined to name the mission group or the participants affected for privacy reasons.

Kurkjian said of the five Virginians sickened, only one was hospitalized, and all recovered. Virginia does not require individual cases of the disease to be reported, but clusters of cases do.

The condition is caused by a fungus usually found in bird and bat droppings. People can have mild infections and recover without treatment. According to the report, none of the mission-group members wore protective masks while working.

Contact Tammie Smith at (804) 649-6572 or .