December 1, 2024 | 4:16pm
COTABATO CITY—Three ethnic Tedurays died while 31 others got sick after feasting on sea turtle meat cooked with coconut cream in Barangay Linao in the seaside Datu Blah Sinsuat town in Maguindanao del Norte on Friday, November 29.
Datu Blah Sinsuat Mayor Marshall Sinsuat told reporters on Sunday, December 1, that they have extended initial assistance to the families of his three constituents who died from food poisoning. They were buried immediately by their relatives.
Some of the 31 other villagers in Barangay Linao who suffered from nausea and painful abdominal spasms after ingesting the cooked sea turtle meat are Teduray children, now confined in a hospital.
The physicians Mohammad Ariff Baguindali and Kadil Sinolinding Jr., chief of the Integrated Provincial Health Office-Maguindanao and Bangsamoro regional health secretary, respectively, separately said that they have dispatched epidemiology experts to investigate the incident, a first in Datu Blah Sinsuat.
Baguindali and Sinolinding also separately told reporters that health workers are now attending to the needs of the food poisoning patients confined in a hospital.
Sinsuat, chairperson of the Datu Blah Sinsuat Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, said he has directed all of the 13 barangay chairpersons in the municipality to ban catching of sea turtles for food in seawaters that are under their jurisdiction.
“Our local government unit has a standing policy against that in support of the government’s sea turtle conservation program. This food poisoning incident will never happen again,” Sinsuat said.
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