New E.coli outbreak in France hits children
LILLE, France (Reuters) – Eight children have been admitted to hospital in northern France after eating beef burgers infected with a strain of E.coli bacteria, health officials said on Thursday, fanning fears of a wider outbreak.
The officials said 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.
Privately owned German discount chain Lidl has withdrawn boxes of frozen beef patties which regional health authorities said were behind the French infections. The boxes were sold under the brand “Steaks Country” and had expiry dates of May 10, 11 and 12, officials said.
On Wednesday five children, aged between 20 months and eight years and from different towns in the Nord Pas de Calais region, were taken to a hospital in the city of Lille after suffering bouts of bloody diarrhea.
One was quickly released, but four were still being treated at the hospital. Three are being treated with hemodialysis, a method of removing waste products from the blood in the case of kidney failure.
Three children were admitted to hospital on Thursday, the health official said.
One of the victims’ condition was life-threatening, a medical source told Reuters.
Numbers 16:46 Then Moses told Aaron, “Take your firepan, place fire from the altar in it, and add incense. Go quickly to the community and make atonement for them, because wrath has come from the LORD; the plague has begun.”
