Toddler drinks orange juice with cleaning fluid

By Anastasia Tomazhenkova: A hotel barman in Cyprus accidentally mixed cleaning fluid in orange. A British toddler drank it and became critically ill. Doctors claimed the little girl has shown signs of improvement Tuesday.

Photo: Toddler drinks orange juice with cleaning fluid

The director of the children's ward at Nicosia's Makarios Hospital said the two-year-old girl showed a slight improvement that enabled doctors to take her off a respirator.

"We'll know by tomorrow if we're well on the road to recovery that would allow us to gauge the extent of damage to her internal organs," Dr. Andreas Hadjidemetriou told AP.

The toddler, who was on holiday with her parents at the southern coastal resort of Limassol, suffered internal burns Saturday after sipping the orange juice laced with cleaning fluid, police said in a statement.

The child's 55-year-old father had ordered water-diluted orange juice from the hotel barman. It is unclear how the poison got into the drink, but it appeared the barman may have confused a refilled water bottle containing the colorless, odorless cleaning fluid for water.

The father was also treated in hospital after drinking some of the orange juice and later released.