SALT - Adel Harithi, 19, was pressing his stomach hard with his hand and screaming in pain, calling for nurses in the public hospital here to do something to relieve his colic.
Harithi, a detergent factory worker, was one of scores of people from Baqaa refugee camp and Ain Al Basha town who wanted to enjoy a nice meal on Friday afternoon and ended up in hospitals and health centres. They were suffering from food poisoning blamed on salmonella-contaminated chicken shawerma served by a local restaurant.
Up until yesterday afternoon, the number of people affected with the bacteria rose to 240.
The young man’s condition was not getting any better Tuesday, four days after he first reported to Al Hussein Public Hospital Saturday morning. There, he was attended to for four hours and discharged. But he returned the same day at 8:00pm because of the persistent pain. He received a vein injection and sent home again.
The next morning he was not any better. His family took him to the health centre in Ain Al Basha from where an ambulance rushed him back to the same hospital.
His pain was not only physical. “Bad luck” added to his pain because Friday was supposed to be Harithi’s happiest time. It was his wedding.
Busy with preparing himself for the wedding, he had no time to eat.
“After the wedding party, I felt so hungry and I asked a friend to bring me a chicken shawerma sandwich” from Al Salem restaurant, a very popular fast-food outlet in the camp of more than 80,000 dwellers.
The first few hours after the meal went fine, but there was an end to the good times. Like dozens of the camp residents, he developed diarrhoea, vomiting and fever.
“It is my honeymoon, but instead of being with my bride, I am here with this killing pain,” Harithi told The Jordan Times.
Doctors are now telling him he cannot go home before the end of the week.
The government has vowed to prevent the reoccurrence of such mishaps. While Harithi was begging for help from his bed (without response from medics), a committee from the Health Ministry was in the hospital investigating the case, which has stirred public anger at the health inspection system, prompting authorities to temporarily ban chicken shawerma.
