Pre-packaged food ‘unlikely to have killed children’ – doc

There is growing concern over the number of food poisoning incidents in the country and the lack of updates from government has made it difficult to establish whether there is a serious danger to children.

About 300 children have been treated for suspected food poisoning in recent weeks. The incidents were localised, but in different parts of the country.

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The pattern has raised serious concerns, as many cases have involved alleged expired food, such as pre-packaged biscuits, snacks and the consumption of contaminated food.

Last Sunday, two North West children died from suspected food poisoning. It is understood a 32-year-old woman prepared a meal for her family and three of her neighbours’ children.

An ambulance was called early the next morning when some of the children started vomiting. One of the children was declared dead at their home while the other died in hospital.

Raw eggs or undercooked meat

Health expert and private practitioner Dr Angelique Coetzee said food poisoning was normally caused by bacteria. Food poisoning, she said, is a common name for quite a few symptoms, normally nausea, cramps and pain, vomiting and diarrhoea.

“Infections can be caused by viruses, bacteria or parasites.” Coetzee said food most commonly associated with food poisoning was raw eggs and raw or undercooked meat.

“Chicken and pork must be thoroughly cooked otherwise you run the risk of getting food poisoning,” she said.

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“In terms of fruit and vegetables, one may buy it and then perhaps wash it under a tap, but the water in the tap is not clean and might contain bacteria. One didn’t prepare it wrongly but the water might be contaminated.

“Sometimes one forgets the water component. Dirty or unclean water could also cause food poisoning.”

Coetzee said it could depend on what people bought from the store or spaza shop and in the matter involving the allegedly poisoned children, the main question lay on what they bought.

That was also tricky because “there could be underlying bacterial infections”. “We know they bought pre-packaged chips but that should not be a problem,” she said.

Normally water-borne

“The pre-packaged type of things, like biscuits or chips, are not the problem. The problem is the other food.

“I’ve been in private practice for many years – that’s not the cause of diarrhoea. It’s normally water-borne. So, there’s something else going on.

“If they can’t find it there, they should look at the water because there are also water-borne diseases. So it’s not to say that the problem lies with the spaza shop. It can lie with the drinking water,” Coetzee stressed.

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“It is important to make sure that these children didn’t eat raw or undercooked food, which includes meat, chicken and the poultry or unpasteurised milk.

“We are not sure if they even had milk. Maybe they had some milk and porridge for breakfast and that milk was not pasteurised. We don’t know.

“These are all possibilities but it is highly unlikely that pre-packed biscuits or chips would do this.” Coetzee said what health practitioners did in such cases was to “do blood tests and the sample of the stool will tell us if it’s a virus or bacteria”.

The root problem

“That can guide us to identify what was the real cause of the infection.” With the lack of updates and pathological evidence for the death from alleged expired goods and food poisoning, Coetzee said it was sometimes difficult to establish the main problem.

Government should focus on the districts where there were outbreaks and conduct double-check inspections. “First of all, the source of the water, then whether there was uncooked or raw meat.

“Another thing is schools – do they have proper sanitation? Are there working toilets, because one thing about a bacterial infection, you can give it to someone else. It’s contagious.”