Children's deaths: Karachi restaurant was served notice two months ago

KARACHI: The director of the Sindh Food Authority on Monday said that a restaurant where two children dined and died afterwards from alleged food poisoning had been served an improvement notice two months earlier.

Speaking about the deaths of two children on Sunday afternoon from alleged “food poisoning” after dining at a restaurant in Karachi's Zamzama area, Sindh Food Authority Director Abrar Sheikh told Geo Pakistan, “The restaurant had been inspected around two months ago and was served an improvement notice along with a checklist.”

“We did not issue a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to the restaurant,” Sheikh said while adding that they did not “have a certificate or registration process in place earlier”.

“We will start the process of registering eateries across the province from the end of this month,” he further said.

The Sindh Food Authority director explained, “The provincial assembly passed into law the Sindh Food Authority Act a few months ago and officers were also appointed recently."

Two children, identified as 18-month-old Ahmed and Muhammad, 5, lost their lives on Sunday afternoon allegedly due to food poisoning after dining at a restaurant in the city's Zamzama area.

Police have initiated a probe into the matter and the restaurant has been sealed for forensic investigation.

A post-mortem of the two children was completed on Sunday night. A representative of Jinnah Hospital said the brothers apparently died due to food poisoning.

According to Dr Shiraz, the medico-legal officer (MLO) at Jinnah Hospital, a report subsequent to the deceased children's post-mortem had been reserved. Their deaths look like an incident of poisoning, he said, adding that samples from the bodies and blood specimens had been taken and sent to a laboratory for analysis.

The chemical analysis report from body samples and blood specimens would be released in approximately 5-10 days, Dr Shiraz mentioned, after which the final cause of death could be ascertained.