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how long will an investigation of this kind take you? Well, it can't be done in a day and it will depend on the availability of people to interview may take anywhere from two or three days to several weeks. Dr Albrecht did you call the state in

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on this matter? Yes, I did. Do you think that there's any cause for tremendous alarm on the part of the people who live in Bellini's? Certainly not at this point, DR dos has taken measures already by giving gamma globulin to household contacts of cases which should

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afford them good protection. Certainly modification of any illness they might be having ah until we find out if we can find out sometimes the answer is elusive. What the source of transmission is? There certainly should be no cause for panic. Yeah. What is the is the

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situation insofar as hepatitis is concerned in the community of felonies? Well, we're looking into that. There are some reports from a practitioner here in town that they've had some 10-14 cases within the past month. And we've come over from the State Health Department to work with

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Dr Albrecht and looking into the possible source of infection and mode of transmission at this point, Dr Albrecht, would you call the situation here an epidemic? That question is commonly put to me and I always have to ask when is an epidemic? I suppose for a

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community of as few people as boli nous one might say yes, it's an epidemic. That's nice. Great leverage. Yeah. Mm hmm? Mm hmm, mm hmm. Mhm. How serious and illnesses depending on age. It's the young

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and the old that are mostly involved seriously in between the Children. Up to around 12 or 14 usually have a very mild disease if they're healthy um if there Up over 30 and have been abusing their bodies and drinking too much, it may be very serious

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and kill them. Where does the disease come from? It's a, it comes from carriers and when um you have a case coming into town, like we must have had a few months ago, they put out the virus in the stool and the stool gets into the

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storage and the storage gets into the lagoon. How serious is a doctor? Do you view the situation it's a disaster. What are you, what are you doing as the only physician in Bolinas trying to educate the public not to panic and try to get the water

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cleaned up. The first case occurred about the third week in July and since then there have been 12 cases that I know about. What does it mean? It means that we have an epidemic Dr dos, you're the only physician in Bellini's. How long have you been

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in practice here since July 1? There are various solutions to the Bellinis sanitation problem, but all of them add up to spending a lot of money as things stand now, it'll be at least two years till a proposed sewage treatment plant is in operation. And DR

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dos says the situation is much too critical not to have an immediate interim solution. This is Ed Arnold, for eyewitness news in Bellini's.