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Written By: Admin | Updated : July 25, 2013 4:49 PM IST
July 20
23:32: 31 kids ill in Chandigarh after eating midday meal
At least 31 students of a primary school in Chhattisgarh were hospitalised Saturday after they ate their midday meal, officials said. All students are out of danger and the government has ordered an inquiry. The incident was reported from Mau village-based primary school in Bemetara district. The school head master has been suspended, officials said.
Bemetara District Collector Vasavaraju rushed to the school and summoned the district health staff for the treatment to the affected children. Chief Minister Raman Singh ordered a probe into the incident by Bemetara sub-divisional magistrate. School Education Minister Brijmohan Agrawal suspended the school headmaster Motilal Devangan for carelessness. Notably, after the midday meal fiasco in which 23 students died in Bihar, the administration in Chhattisgarh has issued 26-point guidelines to schools on the meal, dealing mainly with the quality of food.
09:00:Parents blame pathetic healthcare facilities for deaths
The pathetic state of a primary health centre in Bihar and delays in rushing them to better hospitals killed most students after they consumed mid-day meals in their school, the distraught parents say. Days after 22 children died in Saran district, their parents and relatives blamed inadequate facilities at the nearest primary health centre as a major contributary factor to the deaths. Local authorities also took too much time in shifting them to a referral hospital and then finally to Patna. Rameshwar Mahto, Sanju Devi, Gayanti Devi and Upendra Rai of Gandaman village, where the tragedy took place this week, are all parents with near similar stories. (Read:What ails India's healthcare system)
Once the children became sick after eating the contaminated food cooked in the school, they were taken to a barely functional primary health centre at Mashrakh that had no saline kits or life saving drugs. There was virtually no medicine to tackle such a situation, Rai told IANS. After that we took them to a referral hospital but there also nobody could provide proper treatment. There was apathy. It cost the lives of our children, he moaned.
Sanju, another parent, said if proper treatment had been provided at the primary health centre, at least some children could have been saved. Baliram Singh, a villager who was at the medical centre when the children were brought in, said saline kits had to be procured from outside.
There were only two beds, one doctor and one oxygen cylinder. Nothing else, Singh recalled to IANS. Rameshwar Mahto, who lost three grandchildren (Arti Kumari, Shanti Kumari and Vikas Kumar), blamed the delay in shifting the children to Chapra town and the Patna Medical College and Hospital for the large number of deaths. The district authorities took around 10 hours to realise the seriousness of the children's critical condition, he said. Mahto is now attending to his another granddaughter Kajal Kumari, who survived the tragedy. Sixteen children died at government hospitals in Mashrakh and Chapra due to lack of proper treatment and four died on way from Chapra to Patna and two died in Patna, according to villagers and officials.
July 19
17: 58: Children reluctant to eat midday meal all over the state
Students in at least one district of Bihar are now reluctant to eat the mid-day meal served in their school following the death of 23 students after they had contaminated food in the state's Saran district. Parents of children are now worried following the incident Tuesday. Children of more than 20 schools in Saboar and Kahalgaon blocks in Bhagalpur district have refused to take the mid-day meal. They are carrying their own food in their tiffin boxes. Ashutosh, a student of primary school in Gopalpur in Saboar block, said his parents have told teachers of his school not to give him food. They have also told him not to eat the food served in the school.
Hemlata, headmistress of a school, also said she is not getting the food cooked at her school. An organisation, Ekta Shakti Foundation, has decided against providing food to schools of five districts -- Gaya, Patna, Vaishali, Begusarai and Nalanda. Laxman, director of mid-day meal programme in Bihar, told IANS that he has received news of students not taking food at some schools in 5-6 districts. He said he is trying to resolve this problem. After the Saran incident, the education department has decided to close down schools which have no building. As many as 8,000 schools without buildings shall be operated at nearby schools. A staggering 13,500 schools do not have kitchen, while 7,600 schools has received land for construction of kitchen where it will be constructed soon.
15:50:Students beat up teachers
Angry about the recent death of young children in Chappra after eating the midday meal laced with insecticide about 100 students in Bihar s Nawada district, 120 km from Patna allegedly beat up three teachers. There s a feeling of outrage across the state because no one has been held accountable yet for the gross negligence. The school s headmistress and her husband, who allegedly supplied the school its groceries, are both missing.
15:32: Three days after 23 children died due to contaminated mid-day meal in Bihar's Saran district, the Forensic Science Laboratory's report, likely to come out late Friday, was keenly awaited as it would reveal whether there was poison in the food. Amarjeet Sinha, principal secretary, education, had Thursday said it was not a case of food poisoning but poison in food. He said preliminary findings pointed to insecticide poisoning of the oil and vegetables. According to a Saran district official, the forensic science experts had collected samples of the oil used to cook the meal late Tuesday night. The oil samples had a bad odour, officials said. The post-mortem of the children confirmed presence of a poisonous substance in the potato-soyabean curry without detailing the poison.
Saran District Magistrate Abhijit Sinha also said that the FSL report was awaited. Soon after the deaths, a top government official said that he suspected it could be organo-phosphorous poisoning caused due to traces of insecticides in vegetables. He added that doctors had told him that atropine had a positive effect on the affected children. He also did not rule out contamination of the oil used to prepare the curry. Chandrasekhar Singh, a doctor in a government hospital in Saran, who treated several children Tuesday, said 10 kids, who did not eat the curry, are safe. As many as 55 of 65 children fell ill after having the curry and some died, he said.
He pointed that contaminated oil might be the reason for food poisoning as students who did not eat the vegetable were safe. According to district officials, the meal consisted of rice, pulses and potato-soyabean curry. Parents of several children told officials that their children fell ill due to poisonous vegetable. Some children, who consumed only rice and pulses, did not fall ill, they said.
Gas leak sparks panic in Patna Medical College
Panic gripped the Patna Medical College and Hospital here Friday when a leakage was detected in an oxygen gas cylinder in the children's ward, police said. The hospital has under treatment 25 school children who suffered food poisoning after eating mid-day meal in Saran district.
14:48: The leakage created panic among the patients but the situation was soon brought under control, a police officer said.Soon after the news of the gas leak spread, most of the patients, including the 25 children, were evacuated but later returned to their wards, a doctor who did not wish to be named told IANS. Amarkant Jha Amar, hospital superintendent, told the media that there was nothing to worry about and that everything has been normal at the hospital . Twenty-three children died in Bihar's Saran district after consuming contaminated food at their school Tuesday.
Source: IANS
