A sick boy lies on his mother’s lap inside a hospital after he consumed contaminated meals given to children at a school, in the eastern city of Patna, yesterday.
GANDAMAN: The Indian government announced yesterday it would set up an inquiry into the quality of food given to school pupils in a nationwide free meal scheme after at least 23 children died in one of the deadliest outbreaks of mass poisoning in years.
Within minutes of eating a meal of rice and potato curry in the eastern state of Bihar on Tuesday, the children began to fall ill, a cook at the school at the centre of the outbreak said from her hospital bed.
The children, aged four to 12, died after vomiting and convulsing from stomach cramps, officials and relatives said. Death came so quickly for some that they died in their parents’ arms while being taken to hospital.
Dozens of other children are being treated for food poisoning in hospital.
Police said they were searching for the headmistress of the school in Gandaman village in Bihar who has disappeared, along with her family. The school provided free meals under the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, the world’s largest school feeding programme involving 120 million children.
Police said it was not possible to conclusively say what caused the poisoning, but the focus of the investigation was on the oil used in the preparation of the meal.
Doctors treating the children said they suspected the food had been contaminated with insecticide. Media reports said the cooking oil may have been stored in an old pesticide container, but there was no independent confirmation of this.
“The minute the children were brought in, we smelled this foul odour of organophosphorus,” said Dr Vinod Mishra, a doctor in the medical team treating many of the children at Patna Medical College Hospital in Bihar’s capital, Patna.
Organophosphorus compounds are used as pesticides, which are widely available and are often sold wholesale without branding.
The medical superintendent of the hospital, Dr Amarkant Jha, said 23 of the 24 children at the hospital were recovering well and out of danger. One was still in a critical condition.
Police said witnesses had given different versions of how the children fell ill. Central to solving the mystery was finding the headmistress, who fled the village with her family soon after the mass food poisoning, they said.
“The search is on to nab her. She will be the key to the investigation because she will be the one who can share details about the quality of food and the supplier,” said Sujit Kumar, superintendent of police in Saran district, where Gandaman village is located.
Parents said ingredients for the lunches like rice, lentils, salt and oil, were stored at the headmistress’s house and brought to the school each day because there was no storage space at the school. The “kitchen” is a pile of bricks and charcoal outside the classroom.
There were at least 18 burial mounds in the village yesterday, many in a large field opposite the school. Some contained multiple bodies and villagers could not agree on how many children were buried in them. Many parents said they buried their children’s toys and clothes in the graves.
Federal Education Minister M M Pallam Raju vowed that “action would be taken” against those responsible for the 23 deaths but did not single out anyone by name. He gave no details of the committee he was setting up to investigate food quality in the mid-day meal scheme.
REUTERS
