A doctor's life: Food poisoning

First one student arrived at the clinic, then another, and yet another one and sometimes by twos and threes. In a couple of hours all beds were full and we were using extra mattresses from the nursing laboratory to accommodate patients in the hallways and about just anywhere in the hospital. All of them manifested the same problems of abdominal pain and vomiting, with diarrhea coming later in the course of the illness.

The school cafeteria feeds about 900 students regularly and you can imagine the scope of the problem if ever the food gets contaminated. Vegetables used in cooking most often are bought right at the farms on the mountainside just across a deep ravine from MVC. Other vegetables are procured at the town market. It was only in this mass poisoning incident when we discovered that fresh vegetables destined for markets in Manila and the Visayas are dipped in a formaldehyde solution before they are packed for transport to keep them fresh. By the time the formalin-dipped veggies reach their destination (approx. 3 days) the formalin should have evaporated and therefore nothing untoward happens. This batch of cabbage that the cafeteria bought was apparently intended for the Visayas and was just out from the dipping pool and the concentration of formalin was high. Couple that with a less than appropriate washing of the veggies and you serve the food with the formalin in a dangerously high concentration.

We usually don't have a lot of IV fluid bottles in stock and these were used up fast. A vehicle was sent downtown to buy more IVF and even before they started back home I had to radio them to buy all the bottles that they can get their hands on. As the night came we slowly realized the scale of the problem that was in our hands and we had to dispatch another vehicle to get more IV fluid. It was only good that the patients were ambulatory or we could have had problems with the number of nurses helping out. Patients were queueing at the toilets and some had to go even without the toilet due to the congestion. You could smell humanity even before entering the rooms. 

At the second day the news of the epidemic reached the authorities in downtown Valencia and they sent a team to investigate. Epidemiologists from the Department of Health also rushed up anticipating a problem of epic proportions. Radio stations also sent their representatives and in no time we were in the front pages of the national papers. There was no cell phone or satellite in those days and news of this magnitude could have escaped national exposure if only our purchases of IV fluids were not that many. I was determined to keep all the patients inside the campus since there was no serious case just so the school won't get bad publicity. It was only good that the patients were already getting better on the second and third days that there was no need to transport patients to other hospitals. Most parents knew of the problem only after their kids were already well.

The last patient to be discharged was on the 5th day after the food poisoning, and my staff and I finally got a good night's rest. All in all we treated 321 patients.