BMC

mid-day meal

Sahyadri Vidya Mandir

M T Agarwal Municipal General Hospital

Children admitted at the hospital; 700 children from class V-VIII had mid-day meal; only class VII students vomited; (R) Parents wait outside the ward

17 students of a Bhandup school hospitalised after dal-chawal meal; will be discharged today;discontinues self-help group’scontract.A helper and a batch of 17 class VII students – five boys and 12 girls –fromschool in Bhandup took ill after consuming the mid-day meal on Thursday. Rushed toin Mulund, four students were put on IV fluids.Around 700 students from class V to VIII in the school’s morning session were served dal and chawal around 11.30 am. One student from class VII, followed by some others, vomited after the meal. BMC education officer Mahesh Palkar told Mumbai Mirror that six tiffins of cooked rice and four of dal were delivered to the school by Shri Lingeshwar Mahila Mandal, a local women’s self-help group that supplies meals to 25 schools in the area, including Sahyadri Vidya Mandir. According to Palkar, the mid-day meal for the school’s afternoon session was cancelled after the incident and the contract for the group has been discontinued.Though teachers and students had complained of sour taste of the tomatobased dal, Palkar said that “as per procedure, three helpers had tasted the food beforehand, but only one of them took ill”. He said that a forensic team has collected food samples from the school and also from the contractor’s kitchen. School principal Narsing Mane said the self-help group has been providing meals to the school since 2009 and it is the first incident of this nature. Self-help group representative Girish Rane, however, preferred to “wait for the food analysis report from the authorities”.While the hospital said that all the children were stable, the sudden hospitalisation caused panic among the school community. Some parents also complained that the school didn’t inform them about the hospitalisation and they came to know only when they went to fetch their children. “Were they waiting to give us a surprise? Even at the hospital they restricted our entry. When my son saw me, he started crying,” Aditi Naik, a parent, told Mirror. “In fact, we were asked to wait at the school,” another parent Mohini Jadhav said. According to the principal, however, the school was “too busy rushing sick children to the hospital” and could not inform everyone.Some parents said that henceforth they will not allow their children to have mid-day meals. “I give my daughter packed lunch, but she also loves to eat the mid-day meal with everyone. I will tell her to avoid it,” said another parent Surekha Kamble.At the time of going to press, the children were still under observation. “We will start discharging them on Friday,” medical superintendent of MT, Dr Usha Mhoprekar told Mirror.