HARBIN, April 10 (Xinhua) -- Two-hundred-three people were poisoned, including an elderly woman who has died, after eating a breakfast porridge contaminated with rat poison at a hospital restaurant in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on Monday.

    "Someone may have done this on purpose," said Wang Enhai, deputy director of the Provincial Health Department.

    Last Friday police in Zhejiang Province, offered a 50,000-yuan reward for the capture of the person who deliberately put rat poison in the breakfast served at a restaurant in Xixi township. Fifty-seven victims, including a number of students, were hospitalized in that incident.

    A rat poison containing fluoroacetamide was confirmed to be the cause of the food poisoning in Harbin, according to the Heilongjiang Provincial Disease Control Center.

    By noon on Tuesday, more than 3,000 doses of acetamide, an antidote for fluoroacetamide poisoning, arrived in this provincial capital even though all of the victims were out of danger by Monday, local health authorities said.

    A total of 260 people ate breakfast served by the hospital restaurant on Monday morning. It sickened 203 of the dinners, a spokesman with the Provincial Health Department said Tuesday.

    The victims included patients and staff at the Heilongjiang Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Most complained of nausea and diarrhea shortly after eating at the hospital's restaurant.

    Seventy-seven-year-old Du Qingrong, died on Monday afternoon. She was hospitalized on Friday with heart disease.

    The Provincial Health Department on Tuesday sent psychologists to the hospital to counsel the victims.

    "This will help ease the victims' worry, tension, fear, depression and other acute psychological reactions, which directly affect their health," said psychologist Zhang Congpei.

    The hospital restaurant was closed as soon as it was discovered to be the source of the poisoning and local health officials tested samples of the food on Monday.

    The hospital is among the largest and best-equipped medical institutions in Harbin.