JAKARTA: Authorities are probing two cases of food poisoning outbreaks that have affected over 170 students under Indonesia’s ambitious free nutritious meal programme, the latest of at least six known cases since the programme was launched in January.
The nationwide project – part of President Prabowo Subianto’s key campaign promises – aims to boost the nation’s human resource quality in the long term by improving nutrition in children’s meals and nurturing better educational outcomes.
A recent and widely reported incident took place in Cianjur regency of West Java where at least 165 students were admitted to the hospital for food poisoning after consuming the free meal packages last Monday (Apr 21), local media reported.
“We conducted checks on two schools which had 972 students in total, 165 of them were sick,” Head of the Disease Prevention and Control Division of West Java’s Health Office Rochady Hendra said on Saturday, as quoted by local news outlet Detik.
A 16-year-old student from the MAN 1 Islamic senior high school in Cianjur said that he noticed a “bad smell” coming from the shredded chicken, one of the dishes served in the nutritious meal programme on Monday morning last week.
“A few hours after eating it, I began to feel dizzy and vomited,” 16-year-old M Raihan told Tempo.
On Thursday, Kompas reported that 78 students from the two schools – MAN 1 Cianjur state Islamic senior high school and SMP PGRI 1 Cianjur junior high school – had shown symptoms of nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea after consuming the meal packages.
The high number of patients due to the food poisoning cases forced the agency administration to declare a state of emergency in the region, according to the Jakarta Post.
The West Java Health Agency analysed some samples of food from the kitchen and vomit from the patients to assess for possible microbe contamination while the Cianjur Health Agency suspended meal production at the kitchen service units which produced the free nutritious meals.
“The laboratory test results (for possible microbe contamination) have not yet been released,” National Nutrition Agency head Dadan Hindayana told Kompas on Monday as he gave the latest updates.
Dadan also said that the exact cause of the incident remained unclear and was still being investigated.
Previously, he had also said that training and a refresher course would be provided to food handlers to improve their skills, as quoted in the Jakarta Post.
He also said that plastic food trays used in packaging the free nutritious meals may have contributed to the food poisoning experienced by the 165 students.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/indonesia-free-nutritious-meal-programme-food-poisoning-cianjur-5096526
