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Polish officials said an Afghan boy, 6, who ate poisonous mushrooms and underwent a liver transplant has a small chance of survival after his family arrived in Poland following their evacuation from Kabul, Afghanistan, last month, the Associated Press reported.
The Afghan parents and their four children arrived near Warsaw at a quarantine center in Podkowa Lesna on August 23. The family allegedly found death cap mushrooms in a nearby forest and used them to make a soup, causing their poisonings. One of the children, a 5 year-old-boy, died from the soup. A 17-year-old girl was treated and said to be in stable condition. Doctors said the mushrooms are less deadly to adults due to their larger body mass.
Media questioned whether there was enough food at the quarantine center, although Polish authorities rejected the idea and are investigating the poisoning.
Britain requested Poland to evacuate the family last month. The father previously worked with Britain.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
Prosecutors are questioning the center's staff as part of an investigation that could lead to possible criminal charges for inadvertently exposing people to a serious threat of loss of health or life, said Aleksandra Skrzyniarz, a spokesperson for the prosecutors' office in Warsaw. The offense carries a maximum prison term of three years, she said.
Doctors at the children's hospital reported the 5-year-old's death on Thursday.
In a separate incident at a different center near Warsaw, four Afghan men were hospitalized after eating poisonous mushrooms, according to the state Office for Foreigners.
There are about 1,300 kinds of mushrooms in Poland, some 200 of which are poisonous. They are a popular dish, but very good knowledge of them is required to distinguish poisonous from edible ones.
In 2019, 27 people got mushroom poisoning in Poland, and 25 of them had to be hospitalized. No deaths were reported.
Doctors advise against feeding mushrooms to children, because of the risk of poisoning, and because they have little nutritional value.
Death cap mushrooms, among the most poisonous in the world, closely resemble Poland's edible parasol mushrooms.
In Denmark in 2017, two children from a Congolese refugee family died and another nine family members were hospitalized after eating toxic mushrooms.
