Around 400 children fall ill after eating free meals in Indonesian school

Jakarta: Around 400 children have fallen ill after eating free school meals in Indonesia's western Bengkulu Province, in the worst case of mass food poisoning to date linked to President Prabowo Subianto's flagship food programme.

Prabowo launched the programme of free meals for children
and pregnant women in January, but the initiative has been
marred by food poisoning across the archipelago, affecting
hundreds of people.

Last month, 365 people fell ill from free school meals in
Central Java. According to local media reports, laboratory
results indicated that the outbreak was a result of poor
sanitation.

In Bengkulu, the children, aged from about 4 to 12, were
rushed to a local hospital complaining of stomach pain last
Thursday, according to a video handout from the local
government.

Authorities will launch an investigation into the cause of
the illness, the province's vice governor Mian said.

"We will temporarily suspend operations at this kitchen
while we investigate where the weaknesses lie. This is the
domain of the BGN (National Nutrition Agency) investigation team
and the authorities," he said.

Dadan Hindayana, chief of the National Nutrition Agency,
which runs the programme, told Reuters the kitchen had only
recently started operations, asking staff to evaluate services
while waiting for the lab results of the food.

He did not immediately respond to a question about the
root cause of the poisonings.

Since its launch, the free school meals programme has been
rapidly expanded to reach over 20 million recipients, and
authorities plan to reach 83 million recipients by year-end,
budgeting a total cost of 171 trillion rupiah ($10.52 billion)
this year.