After the recent death of 23 children due to contaminated school lunches in the Bihar State of India, the local government has decided to provide printed instructions to school principals about food quality and safety, and even paint the instructions on school walls.
The government school lunches program involved in the deaths was started to encourage more children to attend school by providing low-income children with a free midday meal. It was also believed to help with better nutrition.
The school children between 8–11 years of age fell ill after eating insecticide-contaminated food at their school in Gandamal village in Masrakh block, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the state capital of Patna.
“We are readying detailed instructions about maintaining [the] quality and safety of food served under [the] midday meal scheme in schools,” Director of the midday meal scheme, R. Lakshmanan said, according to a report by the Press Trust of India (PTI).
Instructions are being prepared with the help of food experts and will include training principals about first aid measures so that they can deal with such situations, reports PTI.
After the tragedy, many medical experts are reported to have said that the ailing children should have been immediately given oral re-hydration salts in the school. Lakshmanan said such measures should be known to school principals.
Free hot lunches are served to about 120 million students daily, reported the Indian government in 2011, making it the largest school lunch program in the world.
