WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Doctors at Poland’s main children’s hospital plan to carry out a liver transplant on a 6-year-old Afghan boy who ate highly poisonous mushrooms with his family, but they said Tuesday his 5-year-old brother is in a coma and near death.
The boys and their older sister, recently evacuated from Afghanistan, were hospitalized last week. The family picked and ate highly poisonous death cap mushrooms in the forest near the refugee center where they were staying in Podkowa Lesna, near Warsaw.
Doctors at the Center for Children’s Health Institute said the older brother is to undergo a transplant on Tuesday. He remains in a life-threatening condition. The younger brother is undergoing tests to see if he is brain dead. Their 17-year-old sister is in stable condition at the hospital, as are other family members, who were hospitalized elsewhere.
Poland evacuated the family at Britain’s request after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. The father had worked for the British in Afghanistan.
In a separate incident at a different center near Warsaw, four Afghan men were hospitalized after eating poisonous mushrooms, according to the state Office for Foreigners. One of them has improved and was released from hospital.
Death cap mushrooms, among the most poisonous in the world, closely resemble Poland’s popular, edible parasol mushroom.
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