two Australian locations, South Australia and the

Shiga toxin producing Escherichia coli (STEC) is the commonest cause of post-diarrhoeal hemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) in industrialised countries including Australia.1 The majority of STEC infections are acquired by humans via the food chain, particu-larly from contaminated meat sources.2 In order to develop strategies to prevent acquisition of STEC, it is important to understand the prevalence of the organism in humans with diarrhoea. This summary reports data on screening of stool samples for STEC toxin genes, stx1 and stx2, fro