100 Russian kids hospitalised

2004-11-27 15:40

Vladikavkaz - More than 100 children have been hospitalised with food poisoning in Russia's southern republic of North Ossetia, health officials said on Saturday.

"Some 117 pre-schoolers have been hospitalised during the past two days," said Uruzmag Djanayev, the head doctor at a children's hospital in the regional centre of Vladikavkaz where all of the toddlers have been admitted.

"All of them attended two kindergartens in Oktyabrskoye," a town 10 kilometres north of the city, he told AFP.

"At present, the children's condition is satisfactory," he said. "The diagnosis is food poisoning. We think it may be dysentery but we won't know for sure until Monday, when test results are in."

All of the children were being kept under quarantine in the hospital's infectious unit until then, he said.

The region's chief sanitation official, Taimuraz Butayev, said the children contracted the food poisoning from dairy products that they ate at the kindergartens.

He said authorities had pinpointed the production dates of the dairy products in question and had removed them from sale throughout the republic.

Prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into the incident.

- AFP