Afghan Family Mistakenly Eats Toxic Mushrooms After Escape

Doctors at Poland’s main children’s hospital said Tuesday they will carry out a liver transplant on a 6-year-old Afghan boy who ate highly poisonous mushrooms with his family, per the AP. His 5-year-old brother is in a coma, however, and they are carrying out tests to establish if he is brain dead. The boys and their older sister, recently evacuated from Afghanistan, were hospitalized last week. The family picked and ate highly poisonous death cap mushrooms in the forest near the center where they were accommodated in Podkowa Lesna, near Warsaw.

Doctors at the Center for Children's Health Institute said the older brother is to undergo a transplant on Tuesday. He remains in life-threatening condition. Their 17-year-old sister is in stable condition at the hospital, as are other family members, who were hospitalized elsewhere. Poland evacuated the family at Britain's request after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. The father had worked for the British in Afghanistan. Death cap mushrooms, among the most poisonous in the world, closely resemble Poland's popular, edible parasol mushroom.

(More Afghanistan stories.)