Seven people died on Sunday (September 17th) in a village in central Côte d'Ivoire near Bouaké, where fifty-nine others were hospitalized due to a disease of still unknown origin, hospital and local sources told AFP on Monday. Five people died at the University Hospital of Bouaké and two in Niangban, a village located about thirty kilometers to the south, said a hospital source.
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We have a total of 59 (people) hospitalized" at the CHU of Bouaké, "mostly children and some adolescents," added this source, specifying that the symptoms of the disease are "vomiting" and "diarrhea". "Those who died" are between 5 and 12 years old, confirmed the chief of the village of Niangban, Emmanuel Kouamé N'Guessan. He reported that "about fifty people" were "at the CHU of Bouaké".
Food contamination?
On Sunday, a nurse's aide informed him that children were "dying," he said. A relative of the chief, Célestin Kouadio Koffi, said that according to rumors, a maize porridge would be at the origin of the contamination.
Zitanick Amoin Yao, the mother of the first victim, said she bought porridge and gave it to her son. After an urge to go to the toilet, she says, "he started vomiting when I gave him the medicine I was given at the hospital in Jebonouan." "We went back to the hospital and they told us to go to Bouaké University Hospital, that's where he died at the age of three," she said. Agnes Aya Konan also lost her daughter. She refuses to accuse the seller, but says her children consumed the same porridge on Sunday.
In February, in the village of Kpo-Kahankro, also near Bouaké, two people were sentenced to five years in prison after contamination with clostridium, a bacterium that had killed 16 people according to an official toll, 21 according to villagers.
