Eight children and the mother of one of them died last week after eating sea turtle meat on the island of Pemba, in the Zanzibar archipelago (Tanzania), and another 78 people were hospitalized, according to the authorities of the African country this Saturday. .
Mkoani district doctor Haji Bakari told the Associated Press that laboratory tests had confirmed that all the victims consumed sea turtle meat the previous Tuesday.
Apparently, although the inhabitants of the island of Zanzibar consider this type of meat a delicacy, the truth is that this food periodically causes deaths from chelonitoxicism, a type of food poisoning.
In response to what happened, Zanzibar authorities sent a disaster management team, led by Hamza Hassan Juma, to warn people about the harmful consumption of sea turtles.
This type of incident already happened in November 2021, when seven people, including a 3-year-old child, died in Pemba after eating turtle meat, while three others were hospitalized.
