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The world's largest school nutrition programme continues to make news in India for the wrong reasons for the second day.
A day after 22 children died after consuming mid-day meal at their school in Chapra, Bihar, more horror stories are coming from various parts of the country
NDTV reports that 102 girls of a government school in Neyvelli in Tamil Nadu are in hospital after their midday meal left them sick.The girls, between 9 and 16 years of age, had complained of giddiness and nausea soon after they ate lunch. Officials suspect they were served contaminated eggs.
CNN-IBN reports insects and worms have been found in a mid day meal kitchen in a school in Punjab's Amritsar by inspection authorities.The students of the school have also alleged that they have found worms and insects in their food often and that the water is bitter.
Meanwhile, even as the Bihar govt continues to draw flak for the highest number of deaths through the mid-day meal scheme, the centre has decided to constitute a monitoring committee to look into the quality of food supplied to the schools. The centre had earlier pointed out that it had issued alerts to 12 Bihar districts after shortcomings were found in implementation of the scheme.
The committee is expected to supplement the efforts of the existing mid-day meal monitoring committee which meets twice a year and warns the states if there are any shortcomings.
Asked if any warnings were issued to Bihar by the committee earlier this year after some shortcomings in the implementation of the programme were identified, HRD Minister M M Pallam Raju replied in the affirmative.
"Yes, apparently there has been. There were 12 districts that were identified and alerts were sent and Saran (hit by the incident) was among them," he told reporters here today on the sidelines of a function.
He, however, said they do not wish to highlight the issue right now and play a blame game over it as the death of the children have shocked all.
The focus would now be on strengthening the programme and to ensure such incidents does not "recur again", he said.
He said in the wake of the tragedy that claimed 22 lives, the Centre has decided to constitute a quality monitoring committee to look into the quality of food supplied and ensure effectiveness of the supply chain and proper hygiene.
The committee is expected to supplement the efforts of the existing midday meal monitoring committee which meets twice a year and warns the states if there are any shortcomings.
Doctors attending to the children presently recuperating at the Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) here on Thursday said that the condition of most kids was now improving.
PMCH Superintendent Dr. Amarkant Jha, who assessed the health condition of the children here, said that apart from one child, who was still critical, the condition of all other children was stable and improving.
"All the children are slowly stabilizing. A total 27 patients were brought to this hospital, of which two died. Among the remaining 25, one is a lady and the rest are children. Of the 24 children, 23 are completely out of danger, one is still critical, his condition is a little better today, but we hope his health improves tomorrow. But 24 are completely out of danger," he told the media here.
