AN 11 year old Muslim girl died of anthrax after eating a half cooked kebab made from a sheep's liver, French doctors reported.
The sheep was slaughtered by the girl and her father under Ramadan guidelines in a clandestine slaughterhouse without the usual controls or hygiene standards.
Sixteen days after killing the sheep the girl developed a headache and high temperature, doctors at Poitiers University Hospital told the Lancet medical journal in a letter.
Admitted to hospital, she died two days later from anthrax, a highly infectious animal disease that can be transmitted to human beings.
If recognised early enough, it can be treated with antibiotics like penicillin.
Its symptoms are a high fever followed by pneumonia and internal haemorrhages.
The doctors said the girl was the only person to eat any of the liver, which was barely cooked, because the adults were fasting according to the rules of Ramadan.
The sheep was later boiled and the whole family ate the meat. None of them became ill.
Anthrax cases are rare in western Europe but about 100,000 cases occur each year around the world.