|
| An Indian man mourns as he holds his dead daughter inside an ambulance, outside a hospital in Patna, in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, Wednesday, July 17, 2013. Officials on Wednesday blamed the presence of insecticide in a free midday meal after at least 20 children died and many more were sick after eating lunch at a primary school in the eastern Indian state of Bihar. The children are age 8 to 11. |
PATNA, India
(AP) -- The children started falling violently ill soon after they ate
the free school lunch of rice, lentils, soybeans and potatoes.
The
food, part of a program that gives poor Indian students at least one
hot meal a day, was tainted with insecticide, and soon 22 of the
students were dead and dozens were hospitalized, officials said
Wednesday.
It was not immediately clear how
chemicals ended up in the food at the school in the eastern state of
Bihar.
One official said that the food may not have been properly washed
before it was cooked.
The children, between
the ages of 5 and 12, got sick soon after eating lunch Tuesday in
Gandamal village in Masrakh block, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the
state capital of Patna. School authorities immediately stopped serving
the meal as the children started vomiting.
Savita,
a 12-year-old student who uses only one name, said she had a stomach
ache after eating soybeans and potatoes and started vomiting.
"I
don't know what happened after that," Savita said in an interview at
Patna Medical College Hospital, where she and many other children were
recovering.
The lunch was cooked in the school kitchen.
The children were rushed to a local hospital and later to Patna for treatment, said state official Abhijit Sinha.
In
addition to the 22 children who died, another 25 children and the
school cook were in hospital undergoing treatment, P.K. Sahi, the state
education minister. Three children were in serious condition.
Authorities
suspended an official in charge of the free meal scheme in the school
and registered a case of criminal negligence against the school
headmistress, who fled as soon as the children fell ill.
Angry
villagers, joined by members of local opposition parties, closed shops
and businesses near the school and overturned and burned four police
vehicles.
Sahi said a preliminary
investigation suggested the food contained an organophosphate used as an
insecticide on rice and wheat crops. It's believed the grain was not
washed before it was served at the school, he said.
However,
local villagers said the problem appeared to be with a side dish of
soybeans and potatoes, not grain. Children who had not eaten that dish
were fine, although they had eaten the rice and lentils, several
villagers told the AP.
Sinha said the cooked
food and kitchen utensils have been seized by investigators. "Whether it
was a case of negligence or was intentional, we will only know once the
inquiry has been conducted," he said.
India's
midday meal scheme is one of the world's biggest school nutrition
programs. State governments have the freedom to decide on menus and
timings of the meals, depending on local conditions and availability of
food rations. It was first introduced in southern India, where it was
seen as an incentive for poor parents to send their children to school.
Since
then the program has been replicated across the country, covering some
120 million school children. It's as part of an effort to address
concerns about malnutrition, which the government says nearly half of
all Indian children suffer from.
Although
there have been occasional complaints about the quality of the food
served, or the lack of hygiene, the tragedy in Bihar appeared to be
unprecedented for the massive food program.
