BADIN: Sixty villagers, among them 20 children, lost consciousness after feeling serious pain in the abdomen and excessive vomiting reportedly caused by eating stale food in Leemon Dal village near here on Thursday.

The victims were brought to the Badin Civil Hospital where the condition of most of the victims is stated to be stable.

The victims’ relatives said the village head had distributed cooked rice among people last night and most of the people took away the food home and ate it the next day when it had turned stale. They started falling ill one after the other after having eaten it, they said.

Doctors on duty at the civil hospital, Ashfaque Ahmed Bhurgari and Irfan, told journalists the patients’ condition was better. They had eaten food that was unfit for consumption and caused food poisoning, they said, adding there were no reports of any contamination in the food.

Dr Kausar Mandhro, civil surgeon, said that he suspected the water the villagers drank after eating the rice might be contaminated, he therefore had written to the DHO to get village’s water examined.

Published in Dawn, April 1st, 2016