After eating a Buitoni frozen pizza, Bérénice fell ill. The 6-year-old girl is now in a coma. Leslie and Mickaël, his parents, recounted their “descent into hell” on RMC.
Since the start of 2022, many severe food poisoning in children have been observed by health authorities. Poisoning which notably caused the death of two children. Others, aged 1 to 18, fell ill, contaminated with the bacteria Escherichia Ecoli. In question ? Fresh Up pizzas, from Buitoni, withdrawn from the shelves on March 18. Berenice is one of the children who have been affected. The 6-year-old girl, who suffered from haemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), is today in the coma and was placed on a ventilator. His parents, Mickaël and Leslie, told this “descent into hell” to our colleagues from RMC.
It all started March 16when the mother of the family prepared a pizza for her two daughters. “It was a bit Wednesday noon ritual. It’s fast, it makes everyone happy”, explains Bérénice’s dad. But, the same evening, the first symptoms appeared. Mickaël remembers that his little girl had a stomach ache and diarrhea, then the next morning she started vomiting. The girl’s parents then went at the doctorbefore taking him to the emergency room. “Behind, everything went at hellish speed. In three, four days, we saw our daughter almost wasting away. Without being able to do anything, just by accompanying her. We saw our child suffer martyrdomnot until the end but we were not far from it…”he testifies.
Bérénice’s state of health deteriorates in hospital
Everything accelerated on the weekend of March 20, when Bérénice was hospitalized. His father remembers that his kidneys started to fail. “It released a lot of toxins, which reached the neurological side. It gave him amnesia, hallucinations. The heart flutters”, he says. At that time, the little girl made a first cardiac arrestwhich required intubation. “Afterwards, there was another cardiac incident with a massage lasting more than an hour for it to start again. And it started again, fortunately.”
Leslie assures that she and her spouse have not “more life” since Bérénice has been in the hospital. “We don’t want anything, we do nothing. We were a very tight-knit family, very united”, she remembers, on RMC. The mother, who indicates feel a void in the absence of his daughter, claims that “live at home, it’s a nightmare”. From now on, the couple only hopes for one thing: that Bérénice, who must celebrate her 7th birthday on Thursday March 31, wakes up, “no matter the consequences”and the family is reunited again. Leslie then ensures that their daily “will revolve around her and her recovery”. However, the questions about the sequel are still numerous: will she recover all her faculties? Can she move? For the moment, the parents of the little girl support her in her fight. “We support her, we talk to her, we tell her stories, we kiss her… We talk to each other, next to her, so that she hears our voices. We kiss her, we pamper her“says Mickaël.
The couple also want their story to be heard, to that these tragedies do not happen again. “If the acknowledgment of Buitoni’s guilt is present, chances are that we are a civil partythat we participate in something”, finally affirms the father of the family. This Wednesday, March 30, the Directorate General for Health confirmed, in a press release, that there was a link between the consumption of Buitoni pizzas from the Fresh Up range and certain contaminations with E.Coli bacteria.
A great lover of Spain and a lover of cooking, Émilie is interested in various themes: society, education, gastronomy and especially sport. Passionate about tennis and volleyball, she could spend her …