| inbluevt | Date: Wednesday, 2013/07/17, 10:40 PM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
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It was lunchtime at his school in the Indian village of Dahrmasati Gandawan, and Aditya Prasad was handed a plateful of rice, lentils, soybeans and potatoes. Nothing seemed different. It was the same meal the 8-year-old ate most days, cooked at school and paid for by a government program called the Mid-Day Meal Scheme meant to feed the hungriest children in the poorest corners of India. He remembers eating a little, then seeing his friend, Rama, vomit and collapse. His sister, 6-year-old Khushi -- her name means happiness -- was vomiting too. He stopped eating, a reaction that may have saved his life.
Lying in a hospital bed some 80 kilometers (50 miles) away, Aditya hasn’t heard that his friend is dead. Another 21 of his classmates died, some as their frantic teachers and parents searched for
hospitals to treat them. Eight hours after the meal, 27 survivors, including Aditya and his sister, made it to Patna Medical College and Hospital, in the capital of Bihar state, where the children’s ward
now overflows into the corridors, forcing critically sick children to share beds, vomiting and groaning under exposed electrical cables.
Exhausted doctors huddle in the only air-conditioned room, sharing a quick dinner, and pondering the tragedy.
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 A parent (foreground) rests with her child at a ward housing Indian school children who consumed a free midday meal at a school in the Saran district of Bihar state, at the Patna Medical College and Hospital in Patna on July 17, 2013.
Villagers burying the children who died after food poisoning after consuming midday meal served in the government primary school on July 17, 2013 in Bihar's Saran district near Chhapra, India. Death toll has risen to 20 after 9 more children died. Twenty seven others, including the woman cook, were taken seriously ill and have been shifted to Patna Medical College.
Message edited by inbluevt - Wednesday, 2013/07/17, 10:43 PM |
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