Tension mounted at Gopinathpur under Krushnaprasad block of Puri district on Tuesday as hundreds of students of the Gopinathpur UGME School fell ill after taking iron tablets provided by the Government under the midday meal programme. The students are in the five to ten-year age group.
The villagers ransacked the school and confined the teachers in the school building. According to reports, on Monday, the District Headquarters Hospital had sent iron tablets with the brand name Foliter (small) to the Krushnaprasad Community Health Centre (CHC) for distribution among students of 17 primary schools. Accordingly, the Gopinathpur UGME School received the vitamin tablets, which were distributed among the students on Tuesday.
After consuming the tablets, the students soon suffered from diarrhoea and headache while some of them also fainted. They were rushed to the nearby Rebena Nuagaon CHC. Since the CHC had limited facilities, it kept only 60 students for treatment while referring 117 students to the District Headquarters Hospital at Puri.
Fifteen students were admitted to the ICU as their conditions became critical. It was almost difficult for only three doctors present to handle such a large number of patients.
It was learnt that the vitamin tablet strips containing ten tablets each were manufactured by the Unicure company, Noida, with expiry date of August 2014. One tablet per day should be consumed after the meals. Unfortunately, the students took it before the meal in empty stomach.
Congress leader and former Brahmagiri MlA lalatendu Bidyadhar Mahapatra and present Brahmagiri BJD MlA Sanjay Dasverma visited the hospital, where parents of the students gathered to look after their kids.