Hospital serves lethal breakfast
2007-04-10 08:37
Beijing - A porridge breakfast likely laced with rat poison killed a 77-year-old patient and left more than 200 other people ill at a Chinese hospital, state media reported on Tuesday.
The elderly woman who died had been admitted to the hospital in northeast China's Heilongjiang province on Friday suffering from heart problems but died after eating the toxic breakfast on Monday, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The 202 other victims, who included patients, doctors and nurses, were in stable condition suffering from nausea and diarrhoea after eating the porridge at the hospital canteen, Xinhua said, citing local health authorities.
"Investigators suspect that the water (used for the porridge) was poisoned by a kind of toxicant used to kill mice," Xinhua said.
No details were given as to how the toxic water may have got into the porridge.
The Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, where the incident occurred, is among the largest and best-equipped medical institutions in the provincial capital of Harbin, according to the report.
Reports of food poisoning outbreaks emerge frequently in China, where hygiene and safety standards remain low for many of the nation's 1.3 billion people.
In September last year, nearly 100 children in southwest China's Sichuan province fell ill after eating porridge and steamed bread at a primary school.
The same month 336 people fell sick in Shanghai after eating pork contaminated with anabolic steroids.
Sales of turbot, a popular flatfish, were banned in parts of eastern China last year after they were found to contain carcinogens from antibiotics.