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Summary: Hundreds of school children are hospitalised in a number of cities across Turkey, right after they are given free milk as part of a recent project. Government officials say the children are not poisoned, but ‘affected’.
[3 May 2012] - On the first day of a recent government project overseeing the distribution of free milk in state schools, hundreds of students around Turkey were hospitalised after drinking their milk. More than 1,000 students went to hospitals complaining of poisoning in nine cities and a number of towns in Turkey yesterday. Education Minister Ömer Dinçer said the students had not been poisoned, but “had sensitivities to milk,” while Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç claimed that “the students got sick since they drank milk for the first time in their lives, or they drank too much.”
“A governor said the symptoms stemmed from psychological causes. I am a doctor, and it is the first time I’ve ever heard such a thing,” Baydar said.
A doctor from the Sivas Public Hospital, speaking to the Hürriyet Daily News, said expired milk could be the reason for the mass sickness. Some 600 students in the central Anatolian province of Sivas alone were hospitalised yesterday morning, said Salih Gül, deputy head physician at the Sivas Public Hospital.
“We suggest that the students were made to drink expired milk which had become yogurt-like. Most of the students’ states of health were not that serious, but nearly 30 of them are still on IVs,” Gül told the Daily News yesterday.
However Ali Koyuncu, head of the Milk Producer’s Union and also former Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy said there was no expired milk, adding that the project had made a 400 million Turkish Lira contribution to the Turkish economy.
“Students might be affected psychologically … There is no such thing as poisoning. There might be logistic or conservation problems, but this is a proper project,” Koyuncu told the Daily News.
Around 300 students in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır were also hospitalised, while a number of students were also affected by milk poisoning in the provinces of Kırıkkale, Sakarya, Antalya, Adana, Edirne and Samsun.
Mustafa Büyük, governor of Sakarya - where 35 students went to hospitals with complaints of food poisoning - said “the children were not used to drinking milk.”
“We distributed milk to 70,000 students, but only 35 students were hospitalised, maybe they were hungry or their metabolism was not used to milk. They have all been discharged from hospitals. Doctors wrote up reports [saying] that it was not poisoning. It shows that our children had not consumed milk for a long time,” Büyük told the Daily News yesterday.
Officials from the Ministry of Agriculture have taken milk samples from schools and announced that the exact reason for the apparent poisoning would be determined after analysis.
A 17-firm consortium won the tender to distribute milk to some 7.2 million school children in Turkey in a tender April 18. The cost of the project is estimated at 74 million liras.
Further Information:
- CHINA: Milk poisoning kills three children (12 April 2011)
- CHINA: Public health whitewash (24 June 2010)
- CHINA: Tainted milk scandal resurfaces (25 January, 2010)
- CHINA: Tainted milk victims to be paid (New York Times, 30 December 2008)
- CHINA: Milk scare spread to 54,000 children (22 September 2008)
- More on children's rights in Turkey
Owner: Erdem Güneşpdf: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/students-hospitalized-after-free-milk-f...