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431 Sidoarjo boarding-school students fall ill after free meal program; catering unit suspended
🇮🇩 Indonesia /Culture & Society

431 Sidoarjo boarding-school students fall ill after free meal program; catering unit suspended

From CNN Indonesia · () Indonesian

Translated from Indonesian and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Ongoing story
  • Authorities treated 431 students from Manbaul Hikam Islamic boarding school at eight hospitals after they allegedly became ill following a Free Nutritious Meal program serving.
  • A student reported that the vegetables tasted sour before she developed nausea, weakness and dizziness.
  • The school said the meals came from the Kalitengah nutrition service unit, not from the boarding school, and East Java’s deputy governor said no deaths had occurred.

A 15-year-old student at an Islamic boarding school in Sidoarjo, East Java, said the vegetables in her government-provided lunch tasted sour. By late afternoon, she felt nauseated, weak and dizzy.

The vegetables were not finished because they tasted sour.

— SZ, studentThe student described the meal before reporting nausea, weakness and dizziness.

The student, identified as SZ, said she ate the Free Nutritious Meal at 1 p.m. The menu included white rice, scrambled eggs, Balinese-style tempeh, stir-fried baby corn and green beans, and an apple. She said she left some of the vegetables because of their sour taste.

A total of 431 students from Manbaul Hikam Islamic boarding school were taken to eight referral hospitals after allegedly suffering food poisoning on Tuesday, Sept. 1. School caretaker Abdul Wahid Harun said about 1,000 students had eaten the meal that day, though their physical conditions differed and not all required evacuation.

About 1,000 students, yes. Today, 431 were evacuated to hospitals. Each student has a different level of physical strength.

— Abdul Wahid Harun, school caretakerHe explained how many students ate the meal and how many required hospital treatment.

Wahid said the incident came unexpectedly and blamed food prepared by the Kalitengah Satuan Pelayanan Pemenuhan Gizi, or nutrition fulfillment service unit, in Tanggulangin. He stressed that the food did not come from the school. The catering unit received a temporary suspension after the incident.

It was not prepared at the boarding school. That is not true. The Kalitengah unit handled it, and we only received the benefit.

— Abdul Wahid Harun, school caretakerHe said the suspected source of the food was an external nutrition service unit.

The school established a command post and assigned administrators to monitor students at the hospitals and on campus. Wahid said officials were helping with the response rather than guarding the school. East Java Deputy Governor Emil Elestianto Dardak, who chairs the province’s Free Nutritious Meal task force, rejected reports of deaths and said no one had died.

The report that someone had died is not true. No one has died.

— Emil Elestianto Dardak, East Java deputy governorHe denied reports of fatalities from the mass illness.
About this summary

Originally published by CNN Indonesia in Indonesian. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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