Re: Six children in French hospital with E. coli (Channel NewsAsia, June 16 2011)
Children hospitalised with E. coli in France
Seven sickened but officials say bacteria is unrelated to lethal strain blamed for deaths in Germany.
17 Jun 2011
Seven children have been admitted to hospital in northern France after eating beef burgers infected with a strain of E. coli bacteria, health officials say.
The officials said on Thursday the bacteria was not related to the lethal strain of E. coli that has killed 39 people and made 3,000 ill, most of them in northern Germany.
"We are now certain that this is not the same strain as the one discovered in Germany," a health official from the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region said on i-Tele television.
The children - aged from 20 months to eight years old - had eaten defrosted hamburgers made by the French company SEB which said the meat was taken from animals slaughtered in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, and processed in France.
"There are several suppliers. We will have to await the test results to say which is contaminated," Guy Lamorlette, the SEB chief executive, told the AFP news agency.
- snip -
Six of the children were hospitalised on Wednesday and a seventh on Thursday, authorities said. They came from different towns in France's Nord region, but there were no connections between them.
Dr Michel Foulard of the University Hospital Centre, where the children were being treated in Lille, northern France, said
one of them was in critical condition.
aljazeera
Note: some pressreports mention a connection with Dutch meat. This is denied after research by the Dutch Food Authority: the French meat was not imported.
Note#2: no new cases were reported today according to the Regional Health Service.
