Over 100 tribal students from Maharashtra’s Palghar district’s fell ill to food poisoning  

Over 100 tribal children in Dahanu suffer food poisoning after dinner, sparking investigation into central kitchen operations.

Over 100 tribal children who were served dinner on Monday evening, woke up at midnight with stomachache, feeling nauseated, giddiness and started vomiting. These students are from Dahanu taluka Ashram Shalas (residential schools for tribal children) who were admitted to various hospitals and medical facilities on Tuesday morning. 

District Collector Govind Bodke confirmed, “More than 100 children from different Ashram Shalas under the Dahanu Project of the Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP) were reported of food poisoning on Tuesday morning.”  

There are two central kitchens in the Palghar district: Dahanu and Jawhar taluka that supply daily meals to various Ashram Shalas in the district. The incident is reported from Dahanu project’s four tehsils: Dahanu, Palghar, Talasari and Vasai. “This is a state government funded programme and the Tata Trust runs the kitchen for the last eight years now. In Dahanu taluka alone we have over 7,000 tribal residential children whose parents work in agriculture farms or migrate to nearby districts for work. These residential schools provide the children with free of cost education, residential facilities and nutritious meals thrice a day. Thankfully, none of the students who are admitted are in serious condition. This has never happened in the past; we are enquiring to understand what went wrong and accordingly action will be taken to prevent it from happening in the future,” Mr. Bodke added.  

Food samples have been collected from the central kitchen where food was cooked on Monday evening and was served to the affected children. The official report from the district health department said that an Ashram school in Rankol village in Dahanu reported to a rural hospital that students complained of vomiting, nausea, stomach pain, and fever hours after eating dinner on Monday night. Following that, several schools started calling their respective nearby healthcare centres with students falling sick. Around 3 a.m., approximately 28 girl students were reported to fall sick and were rushed to a nearby health centre where they remain under observation.  

Mr. Bodke said that the health department is in the process of compiling data and reports to know the exact number of students who fell sick. “Some students were discharged by Tuesday evening,” he said.  

Amit Narkar, CEO of Aroehan, a Palghar-based NGO that works on tribal development in the district said that the idea of a central kitchen needs to be completely scrapped as these kitchens start preparing meals as early as 1 a.m. and then by the time it is transported and served to the children, there is high chance of the food going stale. “If at all the tribal development department wants to outsource cooking, then we strongly feel that they can pick a nearby area or give the contract to Self-Help Groups. Another concern is the poor infrastructure of these schools where basic facilities such as potable water and hygienic toilets are often missing,” he said.