Sierra Leone News: Food Poisoning Leaves 1 Dead, 8 in Critical Condition

By Abu Bakarr Munu

One person had died while eight others are in critical condition after they ate ating a meal which contained poisonous substance on Saturday August 29, 2019, at a village at Sowa Chiefdom, Kono district, according to hospital sources.

The eight are in critical condition and are current admitted at the Koidu Senbehun Government Hospital, Kono, where doctors are battling to save their lives. The victims are from the same family.

An uncle of the victims, James Tamba Peter Gbuwama said that on that tragic day, one of their eldest sisters Kumba Suma was shivering and crying after eating a meal about half an hour alter.

He said he advised her to go to church for prayers and later they went to the peripheral health unit at Bandajuma, Sowa Chiefdom in Kono.

He said in-charge of the PHU, Christopher Brima administered treatment to the child but there was not enough drugs at the unit. He said that the in-charge advised them to go home.

“However, we later lost the two-year-old child about an hour after the treatment,” Peter said.

He said that on the following day, while they were preparing for the funeral of the deceased, his elder sister Kumba gave the other children the food she cooked the previously day for them to eat.

He said that few minutes after the children ate the food, his own daughter came running and said to him that her stomach is aching and later she started vomiting.

He said that just within that same time her sister also collapsed in the kitchen and he had to carry her on his back to the PHU, and later a four-year-old child. “We are at the PHU when another child that ate the pumpkin-soup rice was rushed to the PHU then the other in that succession,” Peter Gbuwama said, adding that they were referred to the Koidu Government Hospital in Kono with the aid of an ambulance.

Peter Gbuwama said that it was at the Koidu Government Hospital that medical practitioners came to a conclusion that it was as a result of the food they ate that contained a poisonous substance that led to death and hospitalisation of the victims.

Peter Gbuwama said he did not eat the food his sister prepared on that day because he does not eat pumpkin.

It is claimed that the poisonous chemical substance is used by local farmers to prevent birds, and other farm pests from eating crops in their garden.