Eat at the Edsa Shangri-La Hotel at your own risk

BLURBAL THRUSTS

Poisoned food at Edsa Shangri-La Hotel

By Louie Logarta

Diners beware. Eat at the Edsa Shangri-La Hotel at your own risk. You may just regret it; that is if you get to live through the experience.

Only recently, the rated five-star hotel in the Ortigas Center, Mandaluyong City was slapped with a damage claim suit before the Quezon City Regional Trial Court in connection with an alleged food poisoning incident which occurred last year.

Named respondents in the civil suit were several ranking officials of the upscale establishment — which is said to be part of the world-renowned Shangri-La hotels and resorts chain with headquarters in Hong Kong — including its general manager, resident manager and most especially the head of the food and beverage department.

In his complaint, businessman Angel Racoma alleged that his wife and two teen-aged daughters had been stricken with the extremely unpleasant ailment which resulted in their having to be hospitalized for a few days after eating food in the hotel’s Heat restaurant outlet during their Thai Food Festival promo in January 2011.

As it happened, all three victims, residents of Ayala Hillside Estates, Balara, QC, had ingested food fare from the buffet table (as well as some a la carte dishes) some of which were laced with the highly poisonous e-coli and staphylococcus bacteria, as attested by their respective medical certificates and the laboratory tests they were subjected to by their doctors.

Plaintiff, who miraculously escaped the food poisoning, recalls that 45 minutes into the meal, one of his daughters suddenly started to complain of severe stomach pain and nausea and asked to be taken to the nearest ladies’ comfort room. She ended up spending close to an hour in the toilet due to continuous loose bowel movement.

The other daughter, who had opted to wait in their car, also soon began to complain about feeling nauseated and sick.

When the family reached home around midnight, the condition of the two girls began to deteriorate with both experiencing similar symptoms which persisted until the next morning.

Because of the severe pain they were in, the Racomas decided to rush their kids to St. Luke’s Hospital where they were admitted.

At around that time, Racoma said his wife started to feel ill as well with the same severe stomach pains, nausea and loose bowel movement, so she also had to be confined.

The Racoma case is déjà vu for Edsa Shang.

Sometime in mid-2011, my good friend and kumpare Dr. Rafael Castillo had narrated in his newspaper column that he and his wife, too, had fallen victim to the hotel’s poisoned food which caused them to have “repeated bouts of watery diarrhea.”

Dr. Castillo said they had gotten sick probably after eating some of the food served by hotel staff during the annual convention of the Philippine Heart Association (PHA).

However, he said that they weren’t alone in the discomfort because several of their colleagues, some 30 of them, were similarly stricken with the ailment. As a matter of fact, on the last day of the convention, the discussions turned to food poisoning, instead of heart problems, because of the common experience they shared.

Dr. Castillo, who is one of the pillars of the HA and a noted cardiologist in his own right, had elaborated: “I was seeing patients in the clinic after attending the sessions at the hotel — eating lunch and snacks there earlier during the day, and lunch and dinner the previous day — when I started having nausea and stomach cramps. I had to excuse myself in the middle of examining a patient to rush to the toilet. This happened a few more times. My wife and I skipped dinner that evening and went straight to bed. My wife’s bum stomach was not as bad as mine; she usually has a stronger resistance to diseases than me. I was feeling chilly and drained. Several other episodes of watery diarrhea followed during the night. It was good though I wasn’t vomiting so I could replace by drinking oral rehydrating solution the fluids I lost through the diarrhea. The bananas I ate also helped preserve my likely dwindling level of electrolytes.”

The Castillo couple, it turns out, were among the lucky ones as some of their fellow doctors fared out worse and were rushed to the hospital. In his column, Dr. Castillo noted that one of his friends, a lady physician, even lost consciousness probably due to low blood pressure secondary to dehydration. She was taken to the Capitol Medical Center, QC where she was pumped with intravenous fluids and only released after two days when she felt a lot better.

“I awoke at 3 a.m. when I felt like defecating (moving bowels) again. While washing my hands in the toilet, I felt my vision go black. I stood a while to think that it would go back. I groped around the sink to turn off the faucet but since I could not see, I accidentally pushed a mug, making it clatter on the sink and breaking it. My mother asked me if I was okay, and I told her, ‘Mommy, wala akong makita,’” Castillo quoted her as telling him afterwards.

Soon after the incident, Castillo said hotel officials informed him that they had sent samples of the food served during the convention to a laboratory for testing of microbes present, and the results indicated that they were “negative” for pathogens or bacteria.

The same Edsa Shang officials said that the source of the food poisoning could have come from the snacks prepared by third parties which were served in the hospitality suites by unidentified donor pharmaceutical companies.

“This is a possibility, except that some of those who were downed with vomiting and diarrhea never ate any of these snacks and attributed the poisoning to the foods eaten in the hotel,” Castillo said.

What’s odd, according to Castillo, is that the Edsa Shangri-La staffers never took pains to report the food poisoning incident to the Department of Health or concerned Mandaluyong City officials considering the big number of persons involved, thus making it tantamount to the outbreak of a disease.

Smells like a cover-up, if I do say so myself.

Castillo said Health Secretary Enrique Ona had been formally informed by e-mail of the mass food poisoning of 30 prominent physicians at the Edsa Shang.

But that was over six months ago…

Secretary Ona? Secretary Ona? Are you still there?