Cassava downs Cotabato couple

COTABATO CITY — Only days after more than a hundred schoolchildren in Bohol island were poisoned by cassava sweets, a Muslim couple here were rushed to the hospital yesterday after eating boiled cassava tubers.

Doctors at the Cotabato Regional Medical Center confirmed that Nasrudin Salem and his wife, Fatima, both showed signs of food poisoning and were undergoing laboratory examinations yesterday to determine the best treatment for them.

Salem’s brother, Zaide, said he and their neighbors decided to rush the couple to the hospital after they started writhing in pain and vomiting.

"The patients said their neighbors gave them the cassava, which they boiled and ate. A few minutes after eating (the tubers), they complained of stomach ache and started to vomit," Zaide told reporters.

Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, who has ordered the city health
office to investigate the Salems’ case, said his office will help shoulder the couple’s hospital bill.

"This is the first time in decades that we have had this kind of food poisoning case," he said.

The victims reside in Kalanganan district — a remote, swampy area networked by murky tributaries of the Rio Grande de Mindanao. It was only last Wednesday that local officials and representatives of the United States Agency for International Development inaugurated a P2.5-million communal water system for the district’s residents.

Last Wednesday, cassava sweets killed at least 28 grade school pupils and downed 104 others in Mabini town in Bohol.

Experts initially eyed poisoning by cyanide, which can reach toxic levels in cassava if it is not prepared correctly, but investigators have shifted their attention to the possibility that pesticide was the culprit.

Police had searched the home of one of the two vendors who sold the deadly snack at the San Jose Elementary School and found several empty bottles of pesticide commonly used in farming communities.

Authorities said the vendor could be held liable for reckless imprudence resulting in multiple homicide if it is proven that pesticide was mixed with the cassava.

The town mayor and school authorities could also be held liable for civil damages due to "negligence," they said.