3,300 Egyptian Children Hospitalized After Food Poisoning<br />By NOUR YOUSSEFMARCH 15, 2017<br />CAIRO — More than 3,300 children were hospitalized in Egypt on Tuesday after an outbreak<br />of food poisoning at several state-run primary schools, state-owned news media said.<br />Apparently in an attempt to deflect some of the anger, the governor of Sohag, Ayman Abdel-Moneim, quickly suspended the distribution of government meals and demanded<br />that changes be made to how they were stored and transported to schools.<br />Children, most younger than 12, began vomiting within an hour of eating the lunches, Ahmed Nashaat, a Sohag lawmaker, said in a telephone interview.<br />The mass poisoning, in the impoverished Upper Egypt province of Sohag, north of<br />Luxor, was one of the biggest food-safety cases to hit the country in years.<br />Earlier this month, more than 214 students were found to have food poisoning caused<br />by government meals at several schools in the provinces of Minya and Assiut.<br />Outrage over such instances of perceived government neglect was a main cause of the popular uprising in 2011<br />that toppled the government of President Hosni Mubarak.<br />Samples from the lunches, consisting of processed cheese cubes, dry sesame paste bars and loaves of bread, were being analyzed, they added.
