A woman has died after becoming the latest victim after eating ‘toxic broccoli’ in a poisoning that has rocked Italy.
Tamara D’Acunto, 45, died shortly after eating a panini. She purchased her lunch from a food truck in southwest Italy, and was rushed to hospital but she couldn’t recover.
Last week, Artist and musician Luigi Di Sarno, 52, collapsed and couldn’t be saved after buying a broccoli and sausage sandwich on the Diamante seafront in the province of Cosenza.
Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Broccoli has been recalled across Italy following the outbreak and the food truck where the sandwiches were made has also been seized. It comes amid a growing botulism outbreak caused by the toxins produced by Clostridium botulinum bacteria.
The country is on high alert after the Paola Public Prosecutor’s Office demanding an ‘immediate seizure of a commercial product’. Calabria Region’s Department of Health and Welfare issued a statement following the death of Mr Di Sarno last Thursday.
It read: “The emergency procedure established in these cases has been activated, which requires immediate notification to the Poison Control Center in Pavia, the only national centre designated for the management of botulism.
“No region or hospital in the country is authorised to store the antivenom in their own facilities. This serum, however, is exclusively available to the Ministry of Health, which holds it in designated secure locations and distributes it only through the Lombardy Poison Control Centre.
“The first two vials, used for the first patients, were sent directly from the Military Pharmacy in Taranto. However, as the number of cases increased, additional supplies became necessary.
“Yesterday, the Calabria Region, through Azienda Zero, provided a 118 aircraft that flew to the San Camillo Hospital in Rome, where the ministry had centralised additional vials of the antivenom to facilitate distribution.”
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