Botulism boar family receive anti-toxins treatment

THE three people suffering from botulism after eating freshly slaughtered wild boar meat are responding to treatment.

Waikato District Health Board spokeswoman Kathryn Jenkin said yesterday morning that botulism anti-toxin was shipped down from an Auckland hospital on Friday.

It’s unknown if the source of the botulism bacterium was the wild boar – used in a curry – but it was reportedly the only meal the three adult family members and the family’s two children, aged seven and one, did not share.

Shibu Kochummen, 35, his wife Subi Babu, 33, and his mother Alekutty Daniel, 62, ate the wild boar curry for dinner last Friday at their Putaruru home.

Kochummen had killed the boar earlier that day while on a hunting trip with friends.

Within minutes of consuming the meal, Daniel collapsed, vomiting.

Kochummen called an ambulance, but while on the phone, he, too, collapsed.

Emergency services arrived to find the trio on the floor, unresponsive and vomiting.

Within a few days of being admitted to hospital, Kochummen and Daniel were stable and on a ward, though still unresponsive, while Babu remained in the High Dependency Unit.

But by Friday, all three were stable on a ward, Jenkin said.

Samples have been sent to a specialist centre in Queensland for testing to determine the source of the bacterium. It could take several weeks for results to come through.

National Poisons Centre director Adam Pomerleau said botulism cases are fairly uncommon – the last known case in New Zealand was in 2015.

Pomerleau said even when victims are treated with antitoxin, it can take months to recover, as the toxin damages the nerve cells.

A friend of the family said the couple’s two young daughters were being cared for by members of the family’s church, the Hamilton Marthoma congregation.

The family moved to New Zealand from India five years ago and lived in Tokoroa for three years before moving to Putaruru last year.

Family from India were on their way to New Zealand and were expected to arrive in the next few days.