Afghan evacuee child dies from eating mushrooms in Poland
The children ate the mushrooms the day after they arrived.
WARSAW (AFP) - A five-year-old Afghan boy evacuated from Kabul after the Taliban takeover has died in Poland after eating poisonous mushrooms and his six-year-old brother is close to death, doctors said on Thursday.
The two boys arrived in Poland with their family on August 23 and were in quarantine at a migrant facility in the town of Podkowa Lesna near Warsaw.
The children ate the mushrooms the day after they arrived.
“Brain death was confirmed today... We have declared the child dead,” Jaroslaw Kierkus, a doctor at the Children’s Memorial Health Institute in Warsaw, told reporters.
In the case of his brother, who had received a liver transplant earlier this week, Kierkus said that “the prognosis for the boy’s survival is unfavourable”.
The Office for Foreigners, which runs migrant centres in Poland, said earlier that a total of five people had required medical assistance for stomach problems but that they had not initially said they had eaten mushrooms.
The two boys and their 17-year-old sister were taken to hospital on August 26 and 27. The sister was later discharged.
Prosecutors have opened an investigation into the incident.
Jakub Dudziak, a spokesman for the Office for Foreigners, denied a press report that the children had eaten the mushrooms because they were not being fed sufficiently at the centre.
Speaking earlier this week, he said the evacuees are given “three meals a day, consisting of varied ingredients with appropriate calorific value, including dairy products, meat, vegetables, fruit and drinks”.
“In connection with this unfortunate accident, employees of centres for foreigners will sensitise Afghan citizens not to consume products of unknown origin,” Dudziak said.
The news portal OKO.press reported that the children’s father, an accountant, worked for several years for the British army.
After the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the family was evacuated by the Polish military at Britain’s request.
Poland evacuated a total of 1,231 people from Afghanistan.
Most of the evacuees will stay in Poland but others who were evacuated by Polish troops on behalf of third countries or international organisations will go elsewhere.
