Bali hostel poisoning mystery deepens after Chinese traveller’s death

More than two months after a mass poisoning at a Bali hostel left a young Chinese traveller dead and scores of guests violently ill, the incident remains mired in conflicting accounts and uncertainty. Many of the lingering questions are due to the possibility of overlapping causes behind the tragedy, with medical experts pointing to an unusual mix of symptoms that could reflect severe food poisoning, mismanaged fumigation or both. Amid the scrutiny, the hostel at the centre of the incident has broken its silence, offering a measured response but few answers. “This has been an extremely difficult and delicate situation for everyone involved. At this time, the case is still under investigation by local authorities, which means we are not able to share specific details yet,” the Clandestino Hostel told Australian news outlet PerthNow on Wednesday. “We have been fully cooperative from the very beginning, and we hope everything can be clarified and resolved as soon as possible. We are doing everything we can to support the process.” The victim, 25-year-old Chinese traveller Deqing Zhuoga, was found dead beside her bunk at the US$9-a-night hostel in Canggu on September 2, wearing only an unbuttoned blue shirt and surrounded by vomit. Her case drew limited attention at the time, resurfacing only last week after her friend and travelling companion, Leila Li, gave an exclusive interview to The Daily Mail “to warn people so this does not happen to anyone else”. According to Li, the pair had checked into their room on August 31 and joined a communal dinner that evening. Soon afterwards, more than 20 people became violently ill with high fevers, vomiting blood, fainting and collapsing in the hallways. While some were able to check into the local hospital and medical centres, Zhuoga was too sick to move. “I managed to ask for help and got taken to a medical centre three times and then they called an ambulance for me,” Li told the British newspaper. “I asked them to get a doctor for [Zhuoga] and when I got to hospital I messaged her to go in too, but I never got a reply.” Initial reports showed that Zhuoga had died of food poisoning but Li insists there is more to the story. “My attending doctor has confirmed it was pesticide poisoning and food poisoning,” she said. “I went to the medical centre three times and each time my condition improved, but when I went back to my room to rest the symptoms would reoccur.” She also claimed that her friend had told her at dinner that an adjacent room had been closed off for bedbug fumigation. Experts say that mass poisonings due to insecticides or pesticides were “medically possible”, but extremely rare. “There are two possibilities … mass food poisoning after eating together, or the potential for a mass poisoning from insecticide or fumigation. Or it could be a combination of both,” Dicky Budiman, a global health expert and epidemiologist, told news.com.au on Friday. “If it was indeed because of insecticide, that could be possible if the fumigation was done incorrectly, such as in an area with guests or without adequate ventilation. Or if the insecticide contaminated food or food utensils.” Ryki Sihombing, a doctor of internal medicine at Siloam Hospital in the Indonesian city of Medan, said that based on symptoms alone, it would be “very difficult” for a medical professional to make an assessment. “If a patient was exposed to a high dose of insecticide due to fumigation for bed bugs, it is possible that they could experience toxicity, although I have never seen it happen,” he told the Australian outlet. “The treatment would be detoxification, and we would usually administer an antidote, although we would need to know the kind of toxin they were exposed to as there are different antidotes.” This is not the first time tourist deaths have been attributed to bedbug fumigation. In February, two foreign tourists – British influencer Ebony McIntosh and Nadine Raguse from Germany – died while staying in a room that had just been fumigated at the Miracle Colombo City Hostel in Sri Lanka. On November 12, a German family of four died while on holiday in Turkey from what investigators suspect was pesticide poisoning after rooms in their hotel were sprayed for bed bugs and the insecticide spread through a ventilation shaft. Investigations are still ongoing but police said the preliminary findings indicated that Zhuoga’s death was likely due to food poisoning. “While the exact cause of death cannot be definitively determined, gastrointestinal irritation leading to diarrhoea, dehydration and electrolyte imbalance cannot be ruled out,” Badung Police public relations head Ni Nyoman Ayu Inastuti told Antara news agency on Friday. An examination of Zhuoga’s vomit at the Denpasar Forensic Laboratory found no traces of pesticides, narcotics, cyanide, arsenic, hazardous chemicals or methanol, according to Inastuti. In addition, the autopsy showed that there was bleeding in the stomach lining, black-green fluid in the stomach cavity, red spots along the small intestine and an empty large intestine, consistent with gastrointestinal disease.

Bali hostel poisoning mystery deepens after Chinese traveller’s death

Officials have yet to declare a cause of death, with evidence of both food and fumigation poisoning adding to the uncertainty