JAKARTA: Over 800 students fell sick in two cases of mass food poisoning this week after consuming free school meals sponsored by the Indonesian government, officials said on Friday.
One case affected more than 500 and was the biggest outbreak yet under President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship program. From January, when the program was launched, up to August, over 4,000 children have been hit by food poisoning after consuming the meals, according to Indonesian-based think tank, the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance, raising questions on oversight.
In Indonesia’s West Java province, 569 students from five schools in the Garut region experienced nausea and vomiting on Wednesday after consuming chicken and rice provided by one free meals kitchen a day earlier, Nurdin Yana, the secretary of Garut regional government, told Reuters.
“As of Friday, ten students are still being treated at the hospital and others have recovered,” Yana said. Initially, about 30 students had to be hospitalized, while the rest were treated at home, he added.
The local government will increase surveillance of the kitchen that provided the meals, Yana said, adding the program would not be halted but, instead, students would be given more basic food, such as bread, milk, boiled eggs and fruit for now.
Another mass food poisoning case linked to the program occurred on Wednesday in the Banggai Islands of Central Sulawesi province, affecting 277 students, the National Nutrition Agency, which oversees the program, said in a statement, adding that meal distribution in the area was temporarily halted.
Prabowo’s spokesperson Prasetyo Hadi said on Friday that the government apologized for the “re-occurrence of cases in several areas that are, of course, not what we had hoped for or intentional.”
Questions have been raised about standards and oversight of the program, which has expanded rapidly to reach over 20 million recipients, with an ambitious goal of reaching 83 million by year-end and a budget of 171 trillion rupiah ($10.32 billion).
The budget for the program will be doubled next year.
Over 800 Indonesian students suffer mass food poisoning from government free meals
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Over 800 Indonesian students suffer mass food poisoning from government free meals
- One case affected more than 500 and was the biggest outbreak yet under President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship program
Afghan hunger crisis deepens as aid funding falls short, UN says
- International aid to war-torn Afghanistan has dwindled significantly since 2021
- “For the first time in decades, WFP cannot launch a significant winter response,” the UN agency said
KABUL: The UN World Food Programme is unable for the first time in decades to provide effective aid to millions of Afghans suffering from malnutrition, with deaths especially among children likely to rise this winter, the WFP said on Tuesday.
International aid to war-torn Afghanistan has dwindled significantly since 2021, when US-led forces exited the country and the Taliban regained power. The crisis has been compounded by multiple natural calamities such as earthquakes.
“For the first time in decades, WFP cannot launch a significant winter response, while also scaling up emergency and nutrition support nationwide,” the UN agency said in a statement, adding that it needed over $460 million to deliver food assistance to six million most vulnerable Afghans.
“With child malnutrition already at its highest level in decades, and unprecedented reductions in (international) funding for agencies providing essential services, access to treatment is increasingly scarce,” it said.
Child deaths are likely to rise during Afghanistan’s freezing winter months when food is scarcest, it said.
The WFP estimates that 17 million people face hunger, up about 3 million from last year, a rise driven in part by millions of Afghans deported from neighboring Iran and Pakistan under programs to send back migrants and refugees.
Humanitarian agencies have warned that Afghanistan lacks the infrastructure to absorb a sudden influx of returnees.
“We are only 12 percent funded. This is an obstacle,” Jean-Martin Bauer, WFP Director of Food Security and Nutrition Analysis, told a press briefing in Geneva. He added that 3.7 million Afghan children were acutely malnourished, 1 million of whom were severe cases. “So yes, children are dying,” he said.
