Four-year-old dies in hospital two days after choking on a grape

A four-year-old boy who was rushed to hospital on Thursday after choking on a grape at a Beersheba supermarket died on Saturday, hospital officials said.

The child was buried Saturday night at a cemetery in the southern city.

The boy arrived at the Soroka Medical Center’s pediatric intensive care unit in Beersheba on Thursday evening in unstable condition, after paramedics tried resuscitating him on site at the supermarket. The child had lost consciousness and paramedics said he was unresponsive when they arrived on scene.

Upon arrival in hospital, doctors removed the grape from the boy’s trachea and he was sedated and intubated, according to Hebrew media reports.

The Magen David Adom ambulance service had listed him in critical condition when he was brought to Soroka.

The boy died on Saturday afternoon.

Assuta Medical Center said that prior to the incident, there were four other cases of children suffocating on smalls objects in the previous four days.

Two of the children were released from the hospital within a few hours, while the other two had to undergo emergency surgery.

According to Beterem, an organization that advocates for child safety precautions, suffocation is the third leading cause of death among young children in Israel.