Food poisoning spreads among Egypt’s children, likely caused by free school meals

Over 300 children exhibited symptoms of food poisoning in three governorates across Egypt on Tuesday, adding to a spate of food poisoning cases across the nation this month in which free school meals are suspected to be the cause.

In Suez, 211 children were sent to hospital from Kabreet al-Bahara district, while 98 students from Upper Egypt’s Aswan and three from Cairo were hospitalized for the same reason, according to a statement from the Ministry of Health.

Some 113 school children were also briefly hospitalized on Tuesday in Monufiya governorate after displaying similar symptoms, including stomach pain, according to a Ministry of Education statement yesterday. The statement pointed to the biscuits in free school meals as the possible culprit in the suspected poisoning of students at the Khadra primary and tertiary school in Bagour district.

On March 14, over 2000 children in the Upper Egypt governorate of Sohag were briefly hospitalized after suffering from symptoms such as stomach pain and vomiting. The outbreak reached eight hospitals in the Sohag’s Akhmim district.

Also last week, 24 students were poisoned as a result of consuming food distributed at Nagea Sabea school in Upper Egypt’s Assiut, resulting in the suspension of school meals throughout the whole governorate, while 17 primary school students in Upper Egypt governorate of Beni Suef were also suspected to have food poisoning after eating school meals. Around 200 students were also diagnosed with food poisoning in two schools earlier this month in Minya, another governorate in Upper Egypt.

The Health Ministry spokesperson, Khaled Megahed, said in a televised interview on March 14 that “any meal provided in schools is subject to tests carried out at the premises of the meal’s distributor by the ministry’s Food Oversight Administration, which approves the supply protocol if the food is safe for ingestion.”

The incident prompted the Health Ministry to halt meal supplies to the Sohag schools pending investigations.

On Tuesday the presidency created an urgent committee to investigate the reasons behind the mass food poisoning, according to spokesperson Alaa Youssef. Parliament is also investigating the incidents and plans to visit the affected governorates, education committee member Hany Abaza told privately owned news website Masrawy. The aim is to determine the causes of mass food poisoning to fix the school meals program rather than terminating it, added Abaza.

The National Services Projects Organization, a military institution, has been responsible for school meals procurement since October 2016, according to Randa Halawa, head of the central administration for handling school dropouts at the Ministry of Education.

The current school meals program was designed in collaboration with the United Nation’s World Food Program, and since February it has been funded by the European Union. The Ministry of Solidarity currently oversees the implementation of the program with other relevant ministries.

Increasing free school meals is part of an agreement signed with the IMF in November that entitles Egypt for $12 billion financing over three years. To balance the inflationary repercussions of the austerity measures specified in the agreement, it obliges Egypt to earmark 1 percent of GDP by June 30 for “additional food subsidies, cash transfers to the elderly and poor families, and other targeted social programs … including school meals and subsidies for infant formula.”