India | 20 Children Die After Eating Poisoned Midday Meal at Bihar School

[gatagato]

CHAPRA/PATNA: Nine more children today died of food poisoning after eating their midday meal at a government primary school in Bihar's Saran district, taking the death toll to 20

Twenty seven others, including a woman cook, were taken seriously ill and have been shifted to Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH), principal secretary education department Amarjit Sinha told PTI.

While 16 children, aged below 10 years and studying in Class I to V, had died in Chhapra itself, four others were declared dead on arrival at PMCH late last night, Sinha told.

Superintendent of PMCH Amarkant Jha Azad said that the victims were admitted in the ICU of paediatric department and senior doctors attending to them round the clock.

The tragedy took place at the government primary school in Dahrmasati Gandawan village at Mashrakh block, about 25 km from Chhapra and 60 km from state capital yesterday.

Meanwhile, BJP today gave a call for Saran bandh to protest the Nitish Kumar government following the midday meal deaths.

The RJD is also observing Saran bandh today to protest against the incident.

Leader of opposition in the state assembly Nand Kishore Yadav, his counterpart in legislative council Sushil Kumar Modi and state BJP President Mangal Pandey have already left for Mashrakh to meet families of victims and participate in Saran bandh.

The children fell ill soon after eating the meal, which consisted of rice, pulse and soyabean, police said.

Chief minister Nitish Kumar has ordered a high level inquiry into the incident, sources in the CMO said, adding that a forensic science laboratory team will assist in the probe, which will be conducted jointly by Saran Divisional Commissioner and DIG.

Nitish Kumar also announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh each to the families of the deceased. Of this, Rs 1.5 lakh is from the disaster management fund and Rs 50,000 from CM's relief fund.

Pained over the incident, the CM has put off Bhamasah Saman Samaroh scheduled here today, sources in the CMO said.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/c...w/21111023.cms
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/bihar-vio.../407205-3.html

[Arsedestroyer]

i heard about this on the radio this morning, tragic

[Megamel29]

That is awful. Wonder what part of the food went bad and how it went unnoticed. So sad.

[TwistedSisterr]

hmmmmm sounds suspicious to me...... tampering

[Draculina]

Very suspicious. Such a sad event.

[Darkest Angel]

sorry, redirects to youtube

[Darkest Angel]

Originally Posted by gatagato

CHAPRA/PATNA: Nine more children today died of food poisoning after eating their midday meal at a government primary school in Bihar's Saran district, taking the death toll to 20

Gato I just reposted, did not see your post. Is there a way we can make my post a contribution to yours? There is a riot video. It redirects to YouTube but allows u to watch with link.

[Darkest Angel]

Needs to be contribution to Gato's thread. Did not see. This thread does include video link***

[gatagato]

Thanks for the video, Darkest Angel
I'll upload it here so it will be available once they'll merge the threads. There's an interesting coverage from theGuardian, i'll post it here.

India's deadly problem with school meals
The Bihar deaths are part of a national crisis: a policy meant to improve nutrition and school attendance has gone badly wrong

The death of 22 Indian children in Masrakh, a village in the north-eastern state of Bihar, due to poisoning from their school lunch, has caused global outrage. Riots have broken out in the district, with distraught parents and relatives wrecking the school kitchen and torching police vehicles, while the state government tried to insinuate that it is a political conspiracy to destabilise them in an election year.

The fear is that attention is being diverted from what is an acute problem in many of India's state-run or state-assisted schools. While the ruling party in the state looks for excuses, the harsh reality is that food provided to children all over the country is often substandard, and sometimes not even fit for human consumption.

Snakes and worms have been reported in Mid Day Meals, and adulteration has been said to take place as well. Barely were the children in Masrakh rushed to hospital – where over 60 of them are still unwell – when news came from another part of the state that 15 more children had been reported ill, after a lizard was suspected to have fallen into their lunch. Meanwhile, in the western region of Maharashtra another 31 children contracted gastroenteritis after consuming their school meals.

The Mid Day Meal Scheme was introduced to ensure that a hot cooked lunch would be provided to government supported schools. The meal was meant to contain at least 300 calories per child, with 8-10g of protein. The policy was welcomed as it would mean that the children, many of who come from the most vulnerable sections of society, might attend school because of it and also receive some much-needed nutrition. It is estimated that approximately 100 million schoolchildren are fed through the scheme. But unfortunately, the leakages and corruption in the system are said to be equally as large.

Studies in selected districts of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have shown that only 75% of the requisitioned food is usually doled out to the children. There are also issues of cleanliness. Often the cook hired for the task (at a salary of around £10 per month) is sometimes not paid for months at a time. Even in particularly impoverished areas of Mumbai, schoolteachers have found that the children resist eating the food, because it is such poor quality.

Aware of the constant complaints, the central government had thought of replacing the hot food with prepackaged meals. But there have been instances when even biscuits given to the children have made them dangerously ill. Despite all of this, for some peculiar reason, the government has not taken into account the views of the scheme's stakeholders: the children who are recipients of this deadly state-run charity.

Even when the children in Masrakh started complaining of stomach pain while eating the food – it is now suspected that organophosphorus pesticide was responsible for the deaths – the school headteacher allegedly forced them to finish the meal. She has now fled. The number of deaths has sadly risen because there were no medical facilities near the school either.

The problem is that both in the acquisition as well as in the delivery mechanism corruption is abound. Most of the food is acquired from the Food Corporation of India, also in the spotlight for its less than satisfactory role in the Public Distribution System, which provides rationed grain at special rates to those who live below the poverty line. While the government gets ready to unveil its flagship food security bill next month, under which 60% of the population will receive food every month at highly subsidised rates, it is unclear how it will ever ensure a corruption-free system where the food actually reaches the people who need it most. Nor can they ensure its quality. Even in the Mid Day Meal scheme, which is far more targeted and could be monitored easily, there is little evidence to suggest that school children are actually getting any nutritional value from it at all.

While Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of Bihar, has just announced the princely sum of Rs 2 lakhs (£2200) for every family of a child that has died, the fact remains that these underprivileged children have become victims of these free school meals, rather than its beneficiaries.

So, their motto is "Hot cooked lunch for everyone!", no matter it's rotten, no matter it contains organophosphorus, that shit will end up in the dishes of 100 million schoolchildren: those who are supposed to clean/check (at a salary of around £10 per month) are sometimes not paid at all. All this because their politicians steal, mispend, waste the money (including money coming from international aid).
This is not just pure madness, those people are rotten in their soul, the whole system is criminal, and as always the victims are children, only guilty to be born in such a shithole of a country.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ol-meal-deaths
http://www.medindia.net/patients/pat...-poisoning.htm

[kellyhound]

that's upsetting. wonder what cause they will find.