One woman died and about 30 were sickened after eating a Christmas
turkey dinner served to about 100 people Dec. 5 in the Nackawic Community Hall in
New Brunswick.
Within a few hours of
the supper, several people became sick. One woman died and 30 other people
reported signs of gastrointestinal illness, diarrhea and abdominal pain. Bessie
Scott has been identified as the woman who died, and on Friday family and
friends filed into a funeral home in Nackawic to say goodbye.
Dr. Jennifer Russell,
the acting chief medical officer of health, said on Friday that public health
officials have taken samples of the leftover food from the Christmas supper and
are trying to determine the precise cause of the infections.
“But definitely the
timeline of when those symptoms occurred was within 12 hours, so that is a
pretty quick onset and so that in and of itself would tell us what kind of
bacteria we are looking for,” Russell said.
“The most likely one
that I discussed with Dr. Yves Leger [a local public health officer] is Clostridium
perfringens.”
So much for the critics who decry health units that are requiring higher food-safety standards for community and church dinners.
