Man who ate poisonous mushrooms needs liver transplant

A Te Aroha man who ate poisonous mushrooms needs a liver transplant within the next few weeks or he will die.

The man, understood to be Vietnamese, cooked and ate death cap mushrooms from his back garden with his three-year-old son and fell ill on Sunday.

Thought to be one of New Zealand's most poisonous mushrooms, the fungi's toxins stop cell division, causing the parts of the body which form new cells, such as the liver, to stop.

The man, aged in his mid-30s, is now at Auckland Hospital in the critical care unit.

Waikato Hospital gastroenterologist Tony Smith said yesterday that the toddler would be "okay" but his father, aged in his mid-30s, needed a liver transplant.

Liver transplant co-ordinator from the New Zealand Liver Transplant Unit in Auckland Hospital, Margaret Johnston, said today it averaged three transplants a year for patients with acute cases of liver failure.

Ms Johnston said patients awaiting transplant were normally kept on a ventilator machine in critical care at Auckland Hospital and were often unconscious.

There were no treatments such as dialysis for kidney failure and patients received "as good medical management as possible".

Depending on their blood group and availability of organs, patients could wait a couple of days or weeks.

New Zealand has an agreement with Australia where the first suitable liver is offered to acute patients.

Vietnamese Friendship Association vice-president Manh Bui-Van said he thought all immigrants should have some sort of orientation programme, similar to what refugees received.

Vietnamese used mushrooms for salads and stirfries and they needed to be told that some mushrooms and herbs were unsafe to eat, he said.

New Zealand Chinese Association, Waikato branch president Sid Lim said there needed to be more awareness that eating some mushrooms wasn't safe.

- nzpa