The Yorkshire Post reports parents of two boys who be­came se­ri­ously ill af­ter con­tract­ing E.coli 0157 sus­pected to be from beef burg­ers are still wait­ing for an­swers from su­per­mar­ket gi­ant Sains­bury’s more than a year later.

Al­fie and Oliver Maude, then seven and three, from Rich­mond, North York­shire, came down with up­set stom­achs two days af­ter eat­ing the Taste the Dif­fer­ence Aberdeen An­gus burg­ers in Oc­to­ber 2017. Al­fie was ad­mit­ted to Dar­ling­ton hos­pi­tal two days later with ex­cru­ci­at­ing stom­ach pain and se­vere de­hy­dra­tion.

He was then rushed to New­cas­tle hos­pi­tal for dial­y­sis be­cause his kid­neys were fail­ing. Both boys had de­vel­oped a se­ri­ous con­di­tion, hae­molytic uremic syn­drome, al­though Oliver did not re­quire dial­y­sis.

Both will have to un­dergo reg­u­lar check-ups well into adult­hood to keep an eye on their kid­neys.

Mother Vicci Maude said she and hus­band Steve were be­sides them­selves with worry as their boys “puffed up and turned yel­low”. She said: “When the con­sul­tant came in she said some chil­dren don’t sur­vive this – ob­vi­ously it was the hard­est thing I’ve ever had to hear. They still find it very stress­ful hav­ing to go back to hos­pi­tal and hav­ing blood tests. I just feel they (Sains­bury’s) need to take some re­spon­sibiity.”