Last Friday, March 25, the representative of the municipality of Duitama (Boyacá), Zamir Silva, reported that a sixth-grade student suffered poisoning after eating his snack from the School Food Program (PAE).
The minor was taken to the Duitama Regional Hospital, where he still remains. Silva said he also put the hospital network on notice to identify similar cases and follow up on possible mass poisoning.
In this case only one child required hospitalization, but cases of poisoning of minors from spoiled school food are becoming part of the landscape in the apartment. In fact, in municipalities such as Paipa, Sáchica, Belén, Socotá and Soata, nearly 250 cases have occurred this month.
In the case of Soatá, 45 children fell ill after receiving their snack on Monday, March 7 at the Juan José Rondón Educational Institution and the Superior Normal la Presentación. The mayor of the municipality, Carlos Gutiérrez, issued a statement that day, in conjunction with the principals of the two schools, affected to deny responsibility.
According to some parents, the directors of the institution dared to say that children lied not to attend classes. That hypothesis fell a few hours later.
In Sáchica, the parents of the New Generation Educational Institution reported 50 sick students, while at the Carlos Alberto Olano Valderrama Technical Educational Institution, in Belén, 150 more poisonings occurred.
Faced with the reality that so many children would not lie at the same time to miss classes, the Ministry of Health of Boyacá began to conduct an investigation. They found several things.
The most serious of all is that at least one batch of Nutralac brand milk powder had a high count of bacillus cereus, a bacterium found in some foods and which is a common cause of poisoning, even if that food has not passed its expiration date.
In addition to discarding that batch of milk, the Government of Boyacá alerted school food distributors on the other dairy brands produced in the Santanderean factory Indunilo: Lactoleche, Del Nilo, Miramonte, Nutralac, Merchandise —the milk sold in El Justo y Bueno—, Olympic, Gold Medal, Latti — milk sold in D1—, Más Deli, Mercantil and Malagueña.
On the other hand, according to the local newspaper Boyacá 7 Días, the secretariat has also been making health inspection visits to school restaurants and have found inadequate food handling practices plus infrastructure problems — for example, poor cold chain management.
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