A tenth person died this morning and 24 remain critically ill from food poisoning, in the village of San Jose de Ushua in southern Ayacucho. Medical personnel were flown into the area this morning by military air transport, and three patients who remain unconscious are expected to be transferred by helicopter to a hospital in the city of Ayacucho.
The villagers attended a funeral yesterday and returned to the home of the deceased for a meal. According to the first medical reports, the food was shown to have been contaminated by pesticides.
Incidents of food contaminated by chemical fertilizers or pesticides are not uncommon in farming communities in the Andean highlands, where foodstuffs tend to be stored next to farming supplies. In the nationwide school food program, once known as Pronaa and now Qali Warma, food is prepared locally in small farming communities and despite training on storage and handling, incidents still occur. In 1999, 26 schoolchildren in the village of Tauccamarca in Cusco, died of food poisoning — the foods had been stored next to supplies of Parathion, the chemical insecticide banned in most countries today.
