NUMBER OF TRICHINOSIS PATIENTS RISES IN PULA

PULA, Oct 23 (Hina) - The number of patients who contracted trichinosis has increased since Tuesday, numbering twenty at Pula's General Hospital on Wednesday, and ten in Rijeka Hospital. #L# All patients are not in a life-threatening condition, there is sufficient medication and hospital beds, since hospitals are expecting the possible arrival of new patients. At an extraordinary session of Pula's town leadership called after the break out of the illness, the director of the county's veterinary inspection, Mladen Zaja, reiterated that all patients had consumed smoked and cured, and medium-life Istrian sausages. The location from which the disease originated still cannot be established with a 100 percent certainty. An investigation which is being carried out by sanitation and veterinary inspections indicates the possibility that the products of a Pazin-based meat-processing company, "Pisinium," a Tinjan- based company "Premes" and "Corel" from Porec, are responsible for the disease, chief county sanitation inspector, Marija Miljkovic, said. The companies have orderly documentation on the meat they had used for manufacture, but it is not certain whether everything that had been used in their final products had been inspected. The companies have been temporarily prohibited from distributing their pre- packaged products, which are being withdrawn from sales, participants at the town leadership session said. (hina) lml sb