A 12-year-old girl has died, and seven other children were hospitalized in northern France after a severe E. coli-related food poisoning outbreak.
United States: One 12-year-old girl has been killed and seven other children hospitalized in an outbreak of severe food poisoning in a rural area around a town in northern France.
On 12 June, in and around the town of Saint-Quentin south of Lille, symptoms started appearing, and I was hospitalized the next days.
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The reason behind the breakout is also not established yet since the children aged between 1-12 years have not been believed to have intermingled in the same groups, as BBC News reported.
The girl succumbed to a rare illness known as hemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) related to acute kidney failure, the local prefect of the Aisne region said on Monday.
The leading cause of the infection is E.coli bacteria. That inputted was the newest case reported Wednesday night after being disclosed by the local health authority in Hauts-de France.
Eight children were taken to the hospital with severe symptoms of stomach, including bloody diarrhea, and five of them developed HUS, according to the authority.
Health officials are performing biological testing in a bid to discover the bacterial strain behind each of the cases.
They stated that they saw no evidence that the children ate with each other, and they have eliminated any problem with tap water in the area, which, they stated, is safe to drink and it is usable for all other everyday requirements, BBC News reported.
According to the authorities, the food poisoning E.coli is mostly the cause of the infectious disease (HUS).
But seeing that the families concerned had not got food supplies from a single source, the source of contamination is becoming difficult to determine.
Food inspectors were trying to determine whether the outbreak was a result of contaminated meat.
A number of butchers in Saint-Quentin were shuttered on Thursday, according to the local newspaper L Aisne nouvelle.