The ongoing botulism epidemic in Italy has claimed the life of a 45-year-old woman.
The fatality is the second blamed on the new food poisoning outbreak, the first being that of a 52-year-old artist, Luigi Di Sarno, who fell ill after eating a panini containing a broccoli-like cime di rapa vegetable from a food truck in the south of the country.
Highlights
- Forty-five-year-old Tamara D’Acunto and 52-year-old Luigi Di Sarno passed away after eating food truck sandwiches.
- Two food truck operators, wholesalers, and doctors are now under investigation.
- Italy recorded 36 botulism cases in 2023, the highest in Europe, with 17 new hospitalizations in this outbreak.
According to reports, 17 people have since been hospitalized, and another ten have been placed under investigation.
A 45-year-old woman was exhumed days after her funeral
Image credits: Unsplash / Getty
An Italian outlet covering the unfolding drama, 24 Italia, reported that “the poisonings occurred after eating sausage and turnip top sandwiches purchased from a street vendor in Diamante, a tourist resort on the Tyrrhenian coast near Cosenza.
“Among those poisoned were Luigi di Sarno, a 52-year-old from Cercola, near Naples, and Tamara D’Acunto, a 45-year-old woman.”
D’Acunto, it reported, passed away on August 6 and was buried the next day.
Image credits: Unsplash / Lluís Domingo
Another local outlet, Virgilio, reported D’Acunto’s remains have since been exhumed, with an autopsy being performed on August 12, when it was confirmed that botulism took her life.
Two food truck operators and food wholesalers are being investigated
Footage posted by the outlet depicts the red food truck implicated in a toxic food furore, closed up and taped off at the side of a road.
Image credits: Facebook / Tamara D'Acunto
It goes on to say that authorities indicated that its owner has been registered as a subject of the investigation.
Said food truck owner and another person have been charged with “manslaughter, negligent personal injury, and trafficking in harmful food substances.”
Authorities confiscated jars of turnip tops in oil while the Italian Ministry of Health ordered a nationwide recall of four turnip top products by the local brands Bel Sapore and Vittoria.
Two companies that supplied the charged individuals (yet to be confirmed as Bel Sapore and Vittoria) are also being probed by law enforcement and since have since lawyered up.
A doctor has been singled out for his treatment of 52-year-old Di Sarno
Image credits: Facebook / Tamara D'Acunto
Di Sarno was allegedly discharged from the hospital prematurely, despite feeling ill and nauseous.
She claimed her brother called and complained about a sandwich he had eaten in Calabria that was making him feel terribly unwell.
Image credits: Facebook / Luigi Di Sarno
He phoned again two days later and told her that he was feeling no better; his breathing had become labored, and he was unable to swallow. She recalled how “terrible” he sounded.
Then he told her, “I’m dying, I don’t feel well.” She and another sibling decided to take him to another hospital, but as fate would have it, they had waited too long.
“On the highway between Scalea and Lago Negro, he was suffocating. He was trying to get air, but two minutes later he was gone.”
A friend claims doctors thought Di Sarno was drunk
Image credits: Facebook / Luigi Di Sarno
According to a friend, doctors did not take the ailing Di Sarno seriously leading up to his passing, and mistook him for being drunk.
“It just so happened that they didn't understand what Luigi had,” the friend said.
“The morning I went to pick him up before he [perished], they called me, showed me Luigi, and told me he was drunk,” despite Di Sarno being a nondrinker.
A local health official called on Italians to “follow the rules” of safe food preparation
Image credits: Unsplash / Louis Hansel
Maria Rosaria Campitiello, who heads up the country’s Head of the Department of Prevention, Research, and Health Emergencies, has since released a statement saying:
“It should be noted that the foods at risk of botulinum toxin are homemade preserves prepared vacuum-packed, in oil, or in water, and, rarely, industrial products.
“This is why it is important to follow the rules for the correct and safe preparation and storage of food.”
The illness is also associated with babies, injections, and wounds
Image credits: California Department of Public Health
The California Department of Public Health describes botulism as a disease triggered by a poison that affects the body’s nervous system, eventually paralyzing its host.
It states that while the illness can be contracted from babies and through injection needles, wounds, and food, it cannot spread from person to person.
It also claims that while fatally dangerous, it is “rare”.
Be this as it may, on August 11, Euro News reported that Italy confirmed 452 cases between 2001 and 2020.
America’s botulism diagnoses dwarf those of Europe
Image credits: Getty / KONTROLAB
Euro News further stated that 90.1 percent of the cases were caused by food, and 3.1 percent of them turned fatal.
The year 2023 was Italy’s worst, as the country registered 36, the highest in Europe. France had 15, Romania and Spain had 14, and Germany had 16.
These numbers pale in comparison to those registered in the United States. According to CDC reports in 2019 and 2021, America diagnoses an average of 244 cases every year.
