Woman dies, husband slips into coma after eating deadly fish in Malaysia

An 83-year-old woman died and her husband slipped into coma after eating a puffer fish in Malaysia, citing a local media outlet, the New York Post reported.

The incident took place on March 25 in Johor in the southern Malay Peninsula. The couple’s daughter, Ng Ai Lee, said her father purchased the puffer fish  a delicacy known to contain extremely potent poisons from a local shop.

“My parents have been buying fish from the same fishmonger for many years, so my father did not think twice about it,” Ms said, as per the Post. “He would not have knowingly bought something so deadly to eat and put their lives in danger,” she added.

Report says, the elderly couple washed,cleaned and cooked the fish for lunch, when all of a sudden they started shivering violently and then became breathless.

When their son noticed them, he immediately rushed to the nearby hospital, but the doctors declared his mother dead by evening and father is still battling for his life in Intensive Care Unit of a hospital in Malaysia.

The ’cause of death’ is given as ‘food poisoning with neurological manifestation resulting in respiratory failure with cardiac dysrhythmia possibly due to ciguatera toxin or tetrodotoxin ingestion,’ from the puffer fish,” Mr Soon said in a statement, as per Newsweek.

Puffer fish, which is a popular delicacy in Japan, may contain the potent and deadly toxins tetrodotoxin and saxitoxin, that cannot be destroyed even by cooking or freezing. Usually, only highly qualified chefs, who have been trained in how to remove these toxins, are allowed to serve the fish.