Over 110 Builders Get Food Poisoning in Kazakh West

Excerpt from report by privately-owned Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency

Astana, 22 May: A total of 115 builders of a gas pumping plant, employed by the CAPE and Senimdy Kurylys companies, suffered food poisoning in Tengiz settlement of Kazakhstan’s (western) Atyrau Region today, the press service of the Kazakh Health Ministry has said.

“A total of 115 cases of food poisoning among workers of the companies, developing the ‘second generation plant and gas pumping’ site, were logged on 22 May. Twenty three workers were taken to the Zhylyoy district central hospital and to a clinic in the Shanyrak settlement, where they are being provided with necessary medical aid,” a press release circulated by the Health Ministry says.

The press service said that the rest of the suffered workers refused to go to hospital and “are undergoing a medical treatment as outpatients”.

According to preliminary information, the disease is caused by the consumption of low-quality boiled meat, the press release says.

It also says that specialists from the ministry, national sanitary and epidemiological centre as well as from the Atyrau regional department of the national sanitary and epidemiological centre have been sent to the Tengiz settlement “to take a complex of sanitary and anti-epidemiological measures and make a laboratory analysis of food products, the environment and materials from the staff and patients”.

Originally published by Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency, Almaty, in Russian 0933 22 May 08.

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