Seventy kindergarten children and two of their teachers fell ill
after eating breakfast, thought to be laced with rat poison.
But after receiving emergency hospital treatment, all but five of
the children have been sent home.
And an official from Zhanjiang
Municipal Bureau of Public Health in South China's Guangdong
Province said yesterday those youngsters still recovering in
hospital are expected to return home this week.
The children and staff were struck down with food poisoning on
Monday morning after eating breakfast at their school, Kangle No 2
Kindergarten in Wuchuan's Huangpo Township on the Leizhou
Peninsula, Guangdong Province.
The children, aged between 18 months and 6 years old, began
vomiting and became seriously ill after eating their breakfast.
They were immediately taken to local clinics and then variously
transferred to Wuchuan People's Hospital and Zhanjiang Nanyou
Hospital for emergency treatment.
The children and their teachers were quickly diagnosed as suffering
from food poisoning, said the health official.
It
is suspected that the food they ate was contaminated with some kind
of rat poison.
The poisoning is believed to be one of the most extensive incidents
of child food poisoning ever reported in Guangdong Province.
An
expert medical team that includes senior paediatricians from
Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, and Zhanjiang has been sent to
Wuchuan to help.
A
special task force, consisting of police officers and public health
officials, has also been set up to investigate the incident.
And at this stage police have refused to rule out the possibility
of foul play.
They are concentrating all their efforts on identifying the source
of the poison and bringing those responsible to justice. So far, no
arrests have been made or suspects identified. The Ministry of
Health has not as yet commented on the case.
Past outbreaks of food poisoning in schools and other public places
have been blamed on a lack of effective supervision and
management.
Earlier this year the Ministry of Health urged its officials, at
various levels, to improve their effectiveness at combating the
problem of food poisoning.
On
November 22, 116 pupils and six teachers fell ill with food
poisoning in Wenchang, South China's Hainan Province.
In
another incident in Guangdong Province, on November 21, 103 workers
at a shoe-making factory in Baiyun District, Guangzhou, were
reportedly poisoned after eating food in the factory's canteen.
On
September 14, a man, subsequently executed, poisoned his rival's
dough, killing 42 people in Nanjing, capital of East China's
Jiangsu Province.
(China Daily November 27, 2002)