OPINION
Santé publique France reports that as of 13/04/2022, 53 confirmed cases have been identified, of which 51 are linked to O26 strains, and 2 to O103 strains. For 26 other cases of HUS and STEC infections notified to Public Health France, investigations are ongoing.
These 53 cases occurred in 52 children and 1 adult, who presented symptoms between 01/18/2022 (week 3) and 03/16/2022 (week 11); for 1 adult, the date of onset of symptoms is under investigation.
These 53 cases occurred in 12 regions of metropolitan France: Hauts-de-France (11 cases), New Aquitaine (8 cases), Pays de la Loire (7 cases), Brittany (6 cases), Ile-de-France (9 cases), Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (2 cases), Bourgogne Franche-Comté (2 cases), Grand Est (2 cases), Occitanie (2 cases), Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (2 cases) and Center Val-de-Loire (1 case).
The 52 sick children are aged from 1 to 17 years with a median age of 7 years; 23 (44%) are female; 46 (88%) presented with HUS, 6 (20%) with STEC gastroenteritis. Two children died. The 2 adults are over 90 years old.
Here are several of the stories – badly translated – but, still horrible to read.
Aurélie, 34, and her husband John, 40, led “a normal family life”. Everything was turned upside down when their two sons fell seriously ill, poisoned by the E. coli bacteria via Buitoni pizzas, a brand of the food giant Nestlé. The two boys of Aurélie Micouleau and John Delpech have developed what scientists call hemolytic and uremic syndromes (HUS), which particularly affect young children. The two boys have now returned home. But the damage to the kidneys is irreversible, assures John, who put his commercial activity on hold: “No doctor is able to tell us if their condition will deteriorate in a month or in twenty years”.
“She was at death’s door. She is now locked up in her body.” The parents of Léna, 12, infected in February with E. coli bacteria after eating a pizza from the Fraîch’Up range of the Buitoni brand, testify to their ordeal. A “real nightmare” that has been going on for two months now. Then the exams show “big lesions”, “in the frontal lobe and on the back of the brain”. Léna is in a vegetative state, she no longer speaks, cannot see, and is fed by nasogastric tube. ” Today, they can’t tell us if she will make it ,” the parents worry. “Our life is broken”, they conclude at the microphone of our colleagues, moved.
Aurore and her family were infected with E. coli bacteria after eating a Buitoni pizza. Eight days later, her 19-year-old son is still suffering from worrying symptoms. Health authorities have confirmed a direct link between serious health concerns detected in some forty children and the consumption of Fraîch’Up pizzas from Buitoni. She, her husband, and her son consumed it on March 21 and all were contaminated by the bacteria after eating a Buitoni brand Fraich’Up pizza. The couple have only been sick for 48 hours but their 19-year-old son, Tristan, is still bedridden . Nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, dizziness.
This Monday, April 18, 2022, the mother of a little girl who ate a Buitoni pizza testified to the hell that her family is going through in TPMP. It has now been several days since pizzas contaminated with E.coli from the Buitoni brand have been recalled. Indeed, several of them have caused poisoning in children, including the death of two of them. Amélie, Julia’s nine-year-old mother, was able to go to Cyril Hanouna’s set to talk about all this. First, the young woman opened about her family’s descent into hell: ” She even ate two pizzas, one with cheese and one with Bolognese on February 16. It was going very well and on Tuesday 22 February, she started to be sick. She contracted a kind of gastro six days later. She had diarrhea, she had a lot of wind pain, she was nauseous but she was not vomiting. I went to the general practitioner Thursday, he told me that she probably had a big gastro (…) she gave me a treatment for a gastro”. But things got worse, she continues: ” The next morning she had a waxy complexion, it’s not like gastro, I felt that she was not well, she was on the ground. I was at the pediatric ward in St Etienne, they took care of me straight away, they did check-ups. She was immediately admitted to intensive care (…) Her condition was getting worse. When I asked if my daughter was going to die , I was told that they could not answer me”. The following Sunday, the little girl was transported by helicopter from Saint Etienne to Lyon. “On Monday she went to the block, we stayed six days in intensive care (…) we were released on March 15, she is under surveillance at home, she could not go back to school” lamented Amélie who is afraid to feed her daughter now. Moreover, this contamination could have serious consequences. Apart from the fact that the checkups are not good, Julia must see the doctor every week and do urine and blood tests. She could have sequelae like blood pressure or a kidney transplant that could show up in a few years… A heartbreaking story.
At the end of January, it’s pizza night with Chloé’s family. Her 12-year-old son Robin eats a pizza from the Fraîch’up range by Buitoni, the family’s favorite brand. Two days later, he begins to have a stomachache, becomes pale, sleeps a lot. Doctors suspect gastroenteritis. But at the end of the week, his condition worsens: he no longer eats, can no longer stand, his eyes turn yellow. Chloe then takes him to the emergency room. “When we arrived at the hospital in Lille, the pediatrician bluntly told us that his vital prognosis was engaged, tells Chloé to RMC. If within 48 hours, it affects the liver, the brain, and the heart, it’s Your life passes before you, and you wonder if your life is going to end. You imagine that he is dead and that you are going to his funeral. And you wonder if you are going to live on without him. His two kidneys had stopped, they didn’t work anymore. Within a day, it was too late. He will be sentenced to life on a salt-free diet, and he may have kidney problems later. It became an anguish permanent every night I get up to see if he’s okay.” Robin’s parents are no longer alone with their questions. They joined a Facebook group where the parents of child victims are identified. This group is that of the association “SHU T – Typical Hemolytic and Uremic Syndrome “Let’s get out of silence””. One of the mothers says that her two sons are hospitalized, one of whom is still in intensive care. Among these angry parents, Malo, the father of a 4-year-old girl, Sacha. She too found herself between life and death after eating a Buitoni pizza. She stayed in the hospital for three weeks and on dialysis for 15 days.
In Saint-Varent in the Deux-Sèvres, three children aged two and a half, nine and ten years old were very seriously ill because of the Escherichia coli bacterium. Their mother confirms that she had bought a pizza from the Buitoni brand in January. Between January 25 and February 22, the life of this family from Saint-Varent, in Deux-Sèvres turned into a nightmare. It all starts with their ten-year-old daughter showing symptoms of gastroenteritis. The doctor, after an examination of the child, concluded that he had gastroenteritis. But two days later, the child screams in pain, vomits and becomes dehydrated. Taken to the emergency room, the child will be hospitalized after her mother insisted with the doctors by explaining that her daughter does not have the habit of screaming in pain. But her condition deteriorated, her renal functions, and she was rushed to the Nantes University Hospital, in the nephrology department. She is placed on dialysis four to five hours a day, then every other day. She receives blood transfusions and opioids to ease the pain. In addition to her kidneys, her liver is affected she has pancreatitis. And then little by little his condition improves. On February 5, the youngest of the siblings is sick. She is two and a half years old. Gastroenteritis is also diagnosed. but there again, the little girl’s condition deteriorates, she vomits, staggers, dozes. Urgently transported to Nantes hospital, she convulsed, and her heart was giving out. She spent six days in intensive care with a vital prognosis. Within an hour, she could have died. My daughter almost died. The little one is very seriously affected, her kidneys hardly work anymore, her liver is affected, her heart and even her brain. She develops encephalopathy. Then her condition improved, she left intensive care for the nephrology department. On February 15, it is the nine-year-old boy who is in turn ill. Same symptoms as his sisters, he is hospitalized in Nantes in serious condition, but will recover a few days later.
Mickaël and Leslie are the parents of Bérénice, 7 years old. The little girl is in a coma after eating a frozen pizza: 75 children are currently affected by E.coli contamination. Families and other families await the conclusions of this investigation, like Mickaël and Leslie, the parents of Bérénice, 7 years old. A Buitoni pizza on Wednesday noon was Bérénice’s ritual with her mother and her big sister. One Wednesday evening, at the end of February, she experiences intestinal symptoms, such as gastroenteritis: stomach aches, diarrhea. His father, Mickaël, then takes him to the doctor the next morning. He tells the rest on franceinfo: ” The doctor sent us to the emergency room. And behind, it was the descent into hell. The kidneys no longer worked; it attacked the heart. There were two cardiac arrests, including one with one-hour cardiac massage. Bérénice is sedated, placed in a coma for twelve days now.” According to the doctors of the CHRU of Tours, Bérénice suffers from a severe form of the hemolytic and uremic syndrome, caused by this bacterium. His father now tells us about the back and forth between the hospital, the house, and the school of the big one, as well as all the steps with Public Health France to find where this bacterium comes from. ” We were contacted by Public Health France the day after our admission to the hospital. They asked us questions about our diet, where did we go to do our shopping… They are still on the ‘investigation, on the analyzes, even if they are still moving towards Buitoni pizzas. It would be a trend, but we are not sure of anything yet. “
Little Marceau, 4 and a half years old, came close to death. The child, poisoned by E.coli bacteria after eating a contaminated pizza, was finally able to be treated by doctors at Lille hospital. Extremely shocked, her mother testifies to La Dépêche of the days of anguish that the family has spent. Marceau returned to school just ten days ago with strict recommendations: not to eat salty foods. And, if he hurts himself, do not take anti-inflammatories. “He will never be able to get stung in the arm again either, breathes his mother, still tested by the seven weeks she has just spent. We must keep his veins intact for a transfusion in case he has another kidney problem. “When I arrived at Lille hospital, he greeted me, telling me that the next 72 hours were going to be decisive. That the bacteria were attacking the kidneys but that it could potentially also attack the heart and the brain. J was devastated.”
The mother of Nolan, 12, and that of Yatis, 4, who have just left the hospital. Nolan, 12, is one of these little victims. He left the hospital a few days ago after two long weeks of anguish. “He vomited almost nine days, seven times a day. We went to the doctor who thought it was gastroenteritis. But he went to intensive care for three days. He was infused, probed, transfused We are tired. Tired of following its evolution. The doctors who tell us: ‘we don’t know how long he’s going to be like this, tired’”, says his mother, Vanessa Schneider, in the video of the 8 p.m. news at the top of this article. Like Nolan and Yatis, 73 other children aged 1 to 18 were infected with E. coli bacteria. On Wednesday March 30, the health authorities established a link between some of these contaminations and frozen pizzas from the Fraîch’Up range of the Buitoni brand.
Manoé, he spent twelve days in pediatric intensive care in Nantes (Loire-Atlantique), in February. Hospitalized in Brest for three weeks, Sasha, who will soon be 5 years old, is better today, but her kidneys were no longer working after consuming Buitoni pizza in mid-February. “We go to the hospital with her child because we think she has severe gastroenteritis, and then after the analyzes we tell you that she is going to intensive care”, testifies with a heavy heart, Malo Coz, a Brestois, dad of little Sasha, almost five years old, who spent three weeks at the Morvan hospital of the Brest CHRU, from March 1.The first symptoms, as early as February 26, were stomach aches and diarrhea. It was therefore impossible to make the connection with the frozen Buitoni Fraîch’Up pizza. “The doctors told us that his kidneys were no longer working. In the operating room, he had to put a dialysis catheter. At that age, you don’t have to go through that! “, accuses Malo, whose little girl was a victim of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) due to contamination by the bacterium Escherichia coli. The little Brestoise was able to leave the hospital after 15 days of dialysis and now she is better. “We came home on a very strict diet. Restrictions are easing, but there is still salt and chocolate. As she loves school, she wanted to go back as soon as possible. She begged the doctor, but she only stayed in the morning last week: she is still very tired.
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