In the first three months of 2024, there were 16 food poisoning cases nationwide, poisoning 659 people (nearly 3 times more than the same period last year), including 3 deaths.
In 2023, the country will record 125 food poisoning cases, poisoning more than 2,100 people and 28 deaths. These 3 indexes in 2022 will be 54 – more than 1,300 and 18 respectively.
In principle, cases of poisoning and food poisoning are mostly preventable. However, diagnosis, testing and treatment are difficult because there are many emerging and constantly changing diseases, and there are even cases that have never been mentioned in the medical literature or encountered in practice.
On the occasion of the Month of Action for Food Safety (April 15 – May 15), VietNamNet post the article Behind the haunting poisoning casessharing stories, the journey of decoding toxins and the efforts of doctors to save lives.
Lesson 1: 24 hours searching for clues to save victims of deadly poisoning from dirty food
Lesson 2: A place to expose the “hidden person” causing food poisoning
That is the words “Strategic National Stockpile use only” (roughly translated: Use only from the strategic national stockpile), shown right on the label of the special antidote bottle.
“It’s both random but completely satisfactory,” said Dr. Nguyen. This means that each country needs to have plans, regulations, and deploy a national strategic antidote reserve so that it can immediately provide emergency treatment and treatment of specific types of poisoning at any time. severe, ranging from rare, sporadic poisonings to incidents affecting many people.
“This is the responsibility of the whole system, of which the health sector can only do a part,” said Dr. Nguyen. He also said that “the above reminder is really poignant” and that proactive change is needed if we want to make progress.
 |
Each year, the Poison Control Center, Bach Mai Hospital, diagnoses and treats about 4,000 patients with many special types of poisoning. Most severe and very severe patients cannot be treated at lower levels. About 10-20% of this is food poisoning with 3 main types including natural toxins, microorganisms and chemicals. Many patients need rare, expensive antidotes.
For example, with the group of food poisoning caused by natural toxins, the most common poisoning is mushrooms, puffer fish, toads… In which, the death rate due to mushroom poisoning is up to 50%, according to preliminary summary.
“The most toxic mushrooms are eye-catching, benign, white and attractive mushrooms, such as the cone-shaped white poisonous mushroom (Amanita virosa), the white canopy poisonous mushroom (Amanita verna) containing very toxic amatoxins. . This type of poisonous mushroom looks attractive, but when eaten, it is very ‘dangerous’. Only when the mushroom has gone deep into the intestines does poisoning appear. It takes more than 6 hours after eating, by which time the poison has been completely absorbed. blood,” said Dr. Nguyen.
The initial symptoms of this mushroom poisoning are abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea that lasts for the first 1-2 days, very similar to cases of common food poisoning that then go away on their own. After 1-2 days, the patient’s diarrhea improved and he thought he was cured, but then hepatitis gradually appeared and got worse, leading to death.
“The disease is complicated, it is easy to be overlooked by both doctors and patients, and it is easy to miss the time for initial emergency care,” said Dr. Nguyen. In many cases, the disease progresses very quickly and leads to death, without doctors having time to treat it.
To treat people poisoned by amatoxin mushrooms, an intravenous antidote is needed, which is a rare and very expensive drug. Doctor Nguyen said that when a patient was poisoned, the Poison Control Center asked Bach Mai Hospital to buy an antidote worth several hundred million dong. Paradoxically, there are years when the propaganda work to prevent poisoning is effective, people know that they should stop eating poisonous mushrooms and not get poisoned, while the antidote is not used and has to be “thrown away” if it expires. .
“The Poison Control Center, myself, feel sorry for the hospital when the unit lost money like that,” Dr. Nguyen said sadly. The Poison Control Center even contacted international experts for support, contacted the manufacturer and distributor of the above antidote, and they agreed to provide free new antidote to replace the remaining antidote. The above expired amount, but due to some procedures being too complicated, it could not be implemented successfully.
According to Dr. Nguyen Trung Nguyen, among the 3 groups of causes of poisoning, in our country, the largest group is still microorganisms that cause diseases through the digestive tract such as E.Coli, Salmonella, dysentery, cholera…
This form of poisoning is caused by unsanitary food, contaminated with bacteria right from the production, distribution and processing stages, and at the same time, cooking is not guaranteed to be cooked, causing cross-contamination between hands, objects, and surfaces. face,…
According to Dr. Nguyen, in recent years, this type of poisoning has flared up more due to food insecurity, along with commercial, market, and use of products and services provided to consumers. Many people are not well controlled, so collective poisoning incidents often occur.
According to statistics in developed countries, although the death rate of this group of causes is only about 1%, each incident affects hundreds of people. Doctor Nguyen believes that until the issue of food hygiene and safety is completely resolved, there will be many more similar incidents, with many people affected.
Food contaminated with chemicals is often due to growing, preserving, processing (such as plant protection chemicals, preservative chemicals, food additives…) or due to intentional, for-profit, intentional factors. Consider adding chemicals to food and water sources to poison such as arsenic, cyanide, and rat poison.
Even today, many new chemicals cause new poisoning diseases that have never been mentioned in the medical literature or encountered in practice. For example, in May 2023, the Poison Control Center admitted a female patient to the hospital with symptoms of dizziness, lightheadedness, and severe anemia due to hemolysis. Previously, the patient bought 100g of bright red food coloring powder (called Apricot cinnamon powder) at the market, mixed it with ground pork and wrapped spring rolls. After eating, she had to be hospitalized. Testing of food color powder samples revealed Acid Orange 7, used as an industrial colorant and food additive. When used in high doses in animals, this substance can cause hemolysis. Medical literature has not recorded information that this substance causes poisoning in humans.
In particular, experts emphasized that in addition to substances that cause chronic toxicity or long-term effects that are difficult to assess, chemicals that cause acute toxicity when affecting water sources and food sources can cause hundreds of deaths. , that would be a disaster. If food safety issues are not resolved, such serious poisoning cases will certainly occur.
24 hours searching for clues to save victims of deadly poisoning from dirty food
The office of Dr. Nguyen Trung Nguyen, Director of the Poison Control Center, Bach Mai Hospital, still keeps the bottles of botulinum toxin antidote, shipped from Thailand to Vietnam, in the case of dozens of people being poisoned after Use Minh Chay pate, 2020.
A place to expose the ‘hidden person’ causing food poisoning
“How to find the fastest and most accurate results” is a huge pressure on testers when receiving all food poisoning cases. Because this is an important factor to help clinicians direct treatment and provide warnings to the community.
