Thursday, July 18, 2013

Children Eat Poisoned Food at School in India

Summary of Article: At a school in New Dehli, India, 21 children died and over 48 injured after eating lunch poisoned with toxic insecticides at school. Lunch that day was rice, beans and potato curry. After eating, the children immediately said the food tasted funny, then became sick with vomiting and diarrhea. The teachers fled the school when they saw the children getting sick; the school's cook tasted the food and also got sick. This part of India has many problems with corruption, and cases like this are not unusual; people involved in the food preparation process look for easy ways to cut costs and pocket the money. 120 million children in India get lunch at school as part of a law passed in 2001 to combat malnutrition and improve school attendance.

Questions for Kids, after summarizing article:
  • How do you eat lunch every day? Do you bring it from home, do you get it at school? How is it prepared? 
  • Why did India pass a law to give all students lunch every day? Why was this important? 
  • The part of India where this happened is very poor and corrupt. What does this mean? How did this impact the food being poisoned? 
  • Why is this unlikely to happen where you live? What safeguards do we have here that probably don't exist in that part of India? 
  • What can we do to help children like this? (Give to charity; help invest in products their community produces to provide jobs and labor)

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