Mid-day meal: 44 students fall ill at Coimbatore government school, probe launched

Coimbatore: Forty four children fell ill due to suspected food poisoning after eating a mid-day meal at a government middle school in Kavundampalayam, police said on Tuesday.

Coimbatore Corporation Commissioner M Sivaguru Prabakaran visited the children who are under treatment at the government hospital in the city and said they were "stable and safe." "The students studying in the middle school in Kavundampalayam fell sick after eating the food which initial investigations revealed that a lizard might have fallen while the food was under preparation," he said.

The students, after vomiting, were brought to the hospital and are under constant observation by five doctors, a dean and by a nursing team, he said. "All the students are stable and are safe now," he told reporters. "One parent has taken her child with her home. The parent has been told to bring back the child here for treatment," he said.

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To another query, Prabakaran said a team has been formed to investigate the matter. "The principal of the school is being questioned," he added. Anxious parents who were allegedly denied entry to the hospital were seen exchanging a war of words with the teachers and hospital staff.