Lessons to be learned

Amman’s prosecutor general must have found enough incriminating evidence to charge the Holiday Inn Resort Dead Sea with negligence causing the death of a mother and her child in October. 

Lab tests conducted by the Jordan Food and Drug Administration established that samples of the leftover food ordered from a pool restaurant at the hotel contained high concentrations of Bacillus cereus. This bacteria produces toxins that cause diarrhoea, nausea and vomiting and can kill people contaminated by it unless properly treated in the shortest possible time.

The rod-shaped bacteria often develops in food left out too long at room temperature. Apparently the people in charge of the restaurant in question were either ignorant of the minimum hygienic conditions under which food can be kept or were simply negligent. This will be left to the court to decide. 

As for the charges, negligence can be of a criminal nature if it is it is wilful and gross. 

Now that this case is going to be heard and prosecuted before a court, it may succeed in sending a clear signal to all restaurants and hotels in Jordan to be extra careful when serving food to their customers.

Owners of these public establishments should remain accountable for their negligence or even ignorance.

The trial must be given wide coverage by all media means so that its message may reach all concerned. The public must not be left to the mercy of restaurants or hotels which don’t take the life and health of their consumers seriously. 

What adds insult to injury in this case is the fact that the victims could have been saved had the proper medical treatment been made available to them by the hotel as soon as the symptoms of food poisoning appeared.

Hotels must be called upon to be properly staffed, or supported by any other means, by medics who can deal with emergency situations, which was not the case for the mother and her son who succumbed to the treatable bacterial infection.