50 students fall sick after drinking school milk

Bangkok (February 4, 2003) - Almost 50 students, most of them of kindergarten age, fell sick Monday after drinking milk provided by their government-run schools in a suburb of Bangkok, a local official said.

All of the affected children recovered and were sent home, and the Public Health Ministry was investigating the case, local district chief Somsak Chittrakul said.

Thirty kindergarten students started vomiting a few minutes after they drank milk during a class break at Wat Sai Noi School in Nonthaburi province, 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of Bangkok, Somsak said.

The school, which has 200 students, immediately stopped distributing milk to its other pupils, said Somsak, district chief of Sai Noi, where the school is located.

Shortly afterward, another 17 elementary school students suffered similar symptoms at the Wat Klong Taklai School in the same district, Somsak said, prompting him to stop milk distribution at a third school.

None of the children required hospitalization, he said.

"We can't say what went wrong," he said. "The milk was fresh. It's pasteurized, refrigerated all the time and was days away from the expiry date," he said.

Food poisoning is common in rural Thailand, but rare in urban areas, which have better health and food storage facilities.

Source : Associated Press