{{At least 21 children have died and dozens are in hospital after eating free meals at a primary school in the eastern India, officials have said.}}<\/p>\n
The children, aged between eight and 11 years old, fell ill after lunch on Tuesday at the government-run school in Masrakh, a village 80km north of Patna in Bihar.<\/p>\n
P.K. Sahi, the state education minister, said a preliminary investigation suggested the food was contaminated by phosphorous, which is used to preserve rice and wheat.<\/p>\n
Bihar state official Amarjit Sinha told the Associated Press news agency that 27 children and the school’s cook were taken to hospital in Patna, the state capital.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera’s Karishma Vyas, reporting from the Indian capital, said eight children were in serious condition.<\/p>\n
The meal was cooked in the school kitchen.<\/p>\n
Nitish Kumar, the state’s chief minister, ordered an inquiry. Authorities have suspended a food inspector and registered a case of criminal negligence against the school headmaster.<\/p>\n
Each of the families of the dead children are set to receive 2,00,000 Indian Rupee ($3376).<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera’s Vyas said the free meals were supposed to give the impoverished parents an incentive to send their children to school.<\/p>\n
“And in fact this worked. Studies have shown that this programme has directly increased enrollment of children in school,” she said.<\/p>\n
“So it is extremely concerning that, after consuming this state-provided meal, 21 children have died and more are in the hospital.”<\/p>\n
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{{At least 21 children have died and dozens are in hospital after eating free meals at a primary school in the eastern India, officials have said.}} The children, aged between eight and 11 years old, fell ill after lunch on Tuesday at the government-run school in Masrakh, a village 80km north of Patna in Bihar. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-9123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9123"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=9123"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=9123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}