According to Guardian UK:
Doctors have been fighting to save a group of primary school children poisoned by their school lunch at a primary school in a poor rural area of eastern India yesterday.
Reports vary as to the number of those who have died but officials on Wednesday put the toll at 22, with another 25 in hospital, as well as the school cook. Three of the children were in serious condition, Associated Press reported.
The children, between the ages of five and 12, fell ill after eating the lunch, of rice and lentils, at the village of Chapra, in the poverty-stricken state of Bihar, on Tuesday. The meal is believed to have been contaminated with pesticides.
"We are trying hard to save the children admitted [here] but the condition of some of them remains critical," said Dr Amarkant Jha Amar, superintendent of the Patna Medical College and Hospital.
Angry parents disinterred the hastily buried bodies of some of the victims and displayed them outside the school in protest. Demonstrators pelted a police station with stones, set ablaze buses and chanted slogans denouncing the state government.
India's free school meals programme is one of the biggest such schemes anywhere in the world, covering more than 100 million children. Prices of meat, fruit or fresh vegetables have soared in recent years, leaving parents in poorer families reliant on school lunches to ensure adequate levels of nutrition. But the scheme is plagued by waste and corruption, and incidents of poisoning are common - though they are rarely this serious.
Early tests showed that the food at the school may have been contaminated with pesticides used on rice and wheat crops in the area. Staff stopped serving the meal after children began vomiting.
A senior government health official in Delhi said one possibility was that ingredients had been stored too close to dangerous chemicals. "Washing before cooking would have made no difference," he told the Guardian.
Parents in Chapra first took their children to the rudimentary local health centre before they were transferred to local hospitals. Even in major metropolises India has no functioning ambulance service; in rural areas cars, rickshaws or even carts are used to carry the ill or injured.
Doctors have been fighting to save a group of primary school children poisoned by their school lunch at a primary school in a poor rural area of eastern India yesterday.
Reports vary as to the number of those who have died but officials on Wednesday put the toll at 22, with another 25 in hospital, as well as the school cook. Three of the children were in serious condition, Associated Press reported.
The children, between the ages of five and 12, fell ill after eating the lunch, of rice and lentils, at the village of Chapra, in the poverty-stricken state of Bihar, on Tuesday. The meal is believed to have been contaminated with pesticides.
"We are trying hard to save the children admitted [here] but the condition of some of them remains critical," said Dr Amarkant Jha Amar, superintendent of the Patna Medical College and Hospital.
Angry parents disinterred the hastily buried bodies of some of the victims and displayed them outside the school in protest. Demonstrators pelted a police station with stones, set ablaze buses and chanted slogans denouncing the state government.
India's free school meals programme is one of the biggest such schemes anywhere in the world, covering more than 100 million children. Prices of meat, fruit or fresh vegetables have soared in recent years, leaving parents in poorer families reliant on school lunches to ensure adequate levels of nutrition. But the scheme is plagued by waste and corruption, and incidents of poisoning are common - though they are rarely this serious.
Early tests showed that the food at the school may have been contaminated with pesticides used on rice and wheat crops in the area. Staff stopped serving the meal after children began vomiting.
A senior government health official in Delhi said one possibility was that ingredients had been stored too close to dangerous chemicals. "Washing before cooking would have made no difference," he told the Guardian.
Parents in Chapra first took their children to the rudimentary local health centre before they were transferred to local hospitals. Even in major metropolises India has no functioning ambulance service; in rural areas cars, rickshaws or even carts are used to carry the ill or injured.
