By Hani Hazaimeh

JERASH - Ambulances Saturday evening were lining at the entrance of Jerash Public Hospital to transport to Amman and other cities scores of people suffering fever and diarrhoea, initially blamed on food poisoning.

By Saturday evening, an official toll estimated the number of people suffering from the symptoms at around 300, all from Sakeb village in the northern Jerash Governorate.

However, some village residents said they believed the number to be much higher. Others also said they suspected contaminated water was the reason for the outbreak, not hummos sold at a nearby restaurant as first believed by the authorities.

As a precautionary measure, authorities closed down the restaurant near the village, 18km to the west of the Greco-Roman city of Jerash, and were testing samples of water, food and excrement.

Health Minister Salah Mawajdeh told The Jordan News Agency, Petra, that final results are expected to be out in two days. Tests were being conducted to detect salmonella, shigella or cholera.

Mawajdeh said that 90 per cent of the people treated for the symptoms had eaten hummos from the restaurant in question, two kilometres outside Sakeb, adding that by yesterday afternoon, 70 cases were referred to hospitals in Amman and the northern region.

But some residents interviewed by The Jordan Times said they did not believe bad hummos was the prime suspect. Mohammad Hamdan, who rushed his seven children to the hospital (they were later taken to the army-run Al Hussein Medical Centre (HMC) in Amman), said they did not have any hummos over the past two days.

Another Sakeb resident, Mamdouh Ayasrah, said he was busy moving furniture to a new house, where he and his bride would get married and had almost nothing but water and drinks over the past days. Ayasrah, who, with the rest of his 11-member family, were also referred to HMC, also said they suspected water contamination.

Tamer Ayasrah said his two-month-old cousin was among the cases. “Do not tell me that this infant had hummos.”

People from the village interviewed by The Jordan Times at the public hospital said that the restaurant was too small to sell this huge number of meals. Besides, in a village like Sakeb, inhabited by around 20,000, hummos is not a common dish.

They pointed out that the water network in the village is 40 years old and worn out.

The village receives tap water once a week, according to a schedule set by water authorities. Its turn was Thursday evening, the day the cases started to arrive at the hospital.

But Assistant Secretary General of the Water and Irrigation Authority Adnan Zu’bi said that “routine tests have shown drinking water safe and fit for consumption”.

In July, around 1,000 people from a village near Mafraq were sent to hospital for drinking contaminated tap water.

The case caused the resignation of the water and health ministers at the time.

In August, 176 people were treated for salmonella poisoning after eating shawerma sandwiches from a restaurant in the Baqaa refugee camp north of Amman. Shawerma stalls were closed immediately all over the Kingdom and started to reopen after proving they were taking new measures required by the health authorities.