‘Food poisoning of 33 women in Madaba blamed on spoiled shawerma’

AMMAN — Spoiled shawerma meals are to blame for the poisoning of 33 women who were hospitalised in Madaba last Wednesday, a Ministry of Health official said Monday.

The women, who all work at a clothes factory in Madaba’s Mleih District, some 30km southwest of Amman, have already been discharged from Al Nadim Hospital, said Sultan Qasrawi, head of the surveillance section at the ministry’s communicable diseases directorate.

Thirty-two women were initially admitted to hospital and another followed on Wednesday evening. The patients included two pregnant women.

“One of the pregnant women left hospital on Wednesday and the other on the next day after they both received proper treatment and had no more poisoning symptoms,” Qasrawi told The Jordan Times over the phone.

He also noted that the restaurant that prepared the meals is still closed.

Jordan Food and Drug Administration Director (JFDA) Hayel Obeidat said lab tests on samples from the restaurant’s shawerma showed that there were nearly five hours between the preparation of the food and its consumption, which could have caused the poisoning.

“Other samples revealed a bacterial contamination,” Obeidat told The Jordan Times.

Either JFDA or the Madaba health directorate will refer the owner of the restaurant to court, where he will pay a fine set by the prosecutor general, Obeidat added.

He also commended the governorate’s health directorate procedures of closing the restaurant and taking food samples as a precaution.

Last Wednesday, Madaba Governor Saad Shihab said if the food proves contaminated, the restaurant owner will be referred to the prosecutor general for investigation and then to the governor’s office for administrative procedures depending on the court’s decision.