FRANCE

AUTHORITIES in France have recorded the first death in the country’s E coli outbreak.

Benoit Vendrely, at Bordeaux Hospital in south-west France, said the 78-year-old woman died early yesterday.

She had been hospitalised in Bordeaux since 24 June with hemolytic uremic syndrome – the rare kidney condition that the most seriously ill victims of the outbreak are suffering from.

Vendrely said the strain of E coli the woman was infected with was not the one implicated in the deaths of 48 people in Germany and one each in the US and Sweden. He did not identify the source of the French woman’s E coli contamination.

Seven other patients remain at the same French hospital, six of whom have been confirmed to have the same strain of E coli as in the outbreak that originated in Germany.