Girl’s death raises questions about food safety, govt institutions

KARACHI:

Thirteen-year-old Kanza Ahmed, the eldest of three siblings, had always planned to follow in her mother's footsteps to become a doctor. Last week, however, her dreams were brought to an abrupt end when she died after allegedly getting food poisoning from a contaminated burger at Dilpasand Sweets in North Nazimabad.

"Kanza and her brothers became ill immediately after they ate the burgers and we rushed them to Ziauddin Hospital, where the doctors suspected that it was a case of food poisoning," her father Ahmed Bari, a dentist, told The Express Tribune. "Kanza felt a bit better after receiving treatment and insisted upon going home."

Minutes after reaching their house, she vomited again, this time with blood. The family's worries grew as her face turned blue and they rushed her back to the hospital. She died on the way there.

Kanza's death raised questions not only about food safety at restaurants but also about the working of government institutions. The police refused to register a case against the eatery until a court ordered them to do so. Meanwhile, no public laboratory was available to perform the test necessary to examine the allegedly contaminated food sample. "The police initially made excuses for not registering the FIR, saying that they needed a chemical examination report," Bari explained. "But when I searched for a public health office to conduct the test, I was told that the government had no such facility. Eventually we sent the food sample to the PCSIR laboratories after a week of time-consuming paperwork."

He lamented that there was not a single government facility to perform the microbiological test in a metropolis of over 20 million people. "I myself paid the fee of Rs8,000 for the test at PCSIR but they still cannot tell me when I will get the report." He added that it was the responsibility of the law enforcers to take up his case on the day of complaint but it had delayed the FIR.

"We are medical practitioners and perhaps this is why we immediately suspected the cause of the illness," Bari said. "What about those who face such unexpected and irreparable losses but remain quiet simply because they do not have the knowledge?"

Bari insists he holds no grudge against Dilpasand. All he wants is to know the truth about his daughter's death.

The police on Friday evening registered an FIR against the owners of the restaurant that allegedly caused the death of a girl due to a contaminated burger last week.

Thirteen-year-old Kanza Ahmed, a student of Class VIII, died on January 28 while her mother and two younger siblings fell ill after consuming what the family claimed were poisonous burgers from Dilpasand Sweets in North Nazimabad.

The case was registered on behalf of Kanza’s father M Ahmed Bari. The police had earlier refused to register the case, saying that it was awaiting the chemical examination report.

“In such cases, we need a chemical report but we registered the FIR on court orders,” inquiry officer DSP Altaf Hussain told The Express Tribune. “We are still waiting for the report, since it is the only forensic evidence for the case.”

He added that if the report stated that the burger was not contaminated, the FIR would have no legal value and the case will be closed. “However, if it confirms that the burger was poisonous, we will arrest the restaurant owners nominated in the FIR.”

 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 8^th, 2015.