At least 6,500 children in Germany are suffering from a mysterious illness, Reuters reported. The kids are not concentrated in a single area, but come from five of Germany's 16 states. The German government has started a task force to investigate the reasons behind the epidemic.

The main theory though is that the illness has been caused by food-poisoning, the Associated Press reported. Experts think that the illness can be traced back to a single food supplier.

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The prime suspect is a catering company called Sodexo, which supplies school lunches. Sodexo's spokesman told Euronews that the company is looking into it: “For the moment we are not able to see any reasons for this. We’re analyzing everything possible and are trying to eliminate all the things that could lead to any possible form of this disease.”



Anke Protze, from Germany's Chemnitz Health Bureau, said that some kids had to go to the hospital. “There are serious and not so serious cases - some children had to be hospitalized. With this sickness you have an enormous loss of fluids and minerals. That means the first thing to do is not give antibiotics but replace the fluids,” she told Euronews.