MADINAH, 11 February 2003 — More than 50 people were admitted to hospital emergency rooms in Madinah on Friday night after being exposed to insecticide in the city’s fruit market.
The insecticide was sprayed in the market by the Environmental Health Department of the Madinah municipality, Al-Madinah newspaper said yesterday.
In order to deal with the situation, the Health Affairs Department in Madinah declared a state of emergency in all its hospitals Friday night.
Thabet Naser, a fruit shop owner, told Al-Madinah that the insecticide had no smell but caused coughing, dizziness, vomiting and severe headache. He himself began to cough and when he saw many others coughing, he realized that something was wrong. He then called the police, who detained the people driving the vehicles which were spraying the market. Another shop owner said that at about 9.30 p.m. many people began to suffer from severe coughing.
A woman who became unconscious was rushed to hospital, where she was initially thought to be carrying a virus picked up in the fruit market.
Al-Madinah tried many times without success to contact Homoud Al-Harbi, the director of the Environmental Health Department, and blamed his department for the incident.
