Cairo: More than 3,300 children were hospitalised in Egypt this week after an outbreak of food poisoning at several state-run primary schools, state-owned news media said.
The mass poisoning, in the impoverished Upper Egypt province of Sohag, north of Luxor, was one of the biggest food-safety cases to hit the country in years.
Officials suspect that school lunches may have been contaminated, and they have opened an investigation. Samples from the lunches, consisting of processed cheese cubes, dry sesame paste bars and loaves of bread, were being analysed, they added.
Children, most younger than 12, began vomiting within an hour of eating the lunches, Ahmed Nashaat, a Sohag lawmaker, said in a telephone interview. A total of 3,353 children became ill, and at least 50 ambulances were sent to the schools, state news media said. Since then, all but 17 of the students have recovered and been discharged. No deaths or serious complications were reported.
The ordeal revived complaints over the declining quality of Egypt’s public education and health systems. “It is ridiculous how this keeps on happening,” Nashaat said. “It is not hard to store biscuits and look at the expiration date.”
In an apparent attempt to deflect some of the anger, the governor of Sohag, Ayman Abdul Moneim, quickly suspended the distribution of government meals and demanded that changes be made to how they were stored and transported to schools.
Tuesday’s outbreak was one in a long series that have occurred in state schools and universities nationwide recently. Earlier this month, more than 214 students were found to have food poisoning caused by government meals at several schools in the provinces of Minya and Assiut.
Outrage over such instances of perceived government neglect was a main cause of the popular uprising of 2011 that toppled the government of President Hosni Mubarak. “It was not just the parents who were angry in Sohag,” Nashaat said. Everyone believes that was the result of neglect. This is leading people to conclude that the people in charge don’t care about their kids.”
