Severe Gastroenteritis Outbreak Strikes Moroccan Breast Cancer Awareness Trek

Organized by the French operator Désertours, this trek quickly turned into a tragedy. About 200 participants "presented more or less severe signs of acute febrile gastroenteritis with abdominal pain," the medical team on site confirmed to Mutuaide, the event’s insurer.

"I woke up in a panic around 10:30 a.m. [...], with vomiting, a very bad headache, a very bad stomach. When I came out of the toilet, I had a vasovagal episode. I collapsed to the ground," says Isabelle Brunel, a trekker, to BFMTV. The participants "were extremely ill, with abundant diarrhea and vomiting. It was putrefaction throughout the camp," adds Karen Lacquit, a nurse who was not contaminated.

In a press release published on Thursday, Désertours mentions an epidemic of "unprecedented scale and virulence". The unsanitary conditions of the campsite would be the source of this epidemic, denounce the participants. "The kitchens and the toilets were not very far away, separated by a few meters. The evacuation of all these toilets, it was a pipe that went behind the sanitary tents, that went into a pit that had been dug. Everything was out in the open," laments Isabelle Brunel.

But "the majority of the copro (stool examination, editor’s note) results carried out at the Errachidia clinic were negative," notes Mutuaide. A health investigation has been opened to determine the exact causes of this epidemic. Back in France, the trekkers, for their part, are trying to gather as many testimonies as possible to take legal action.