SHILLONG, Aug 1: The Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council (KHADC) has demanded a judicial probe into the recent incident at the Kyntiew Shaphrang Higher Secondary School, Laitlyngkot where 21 students had fallen sick after swallowing iron and folic acid tablets.
“There is a need to institute a judicial probe to find out what went wrong. We need to fix responsibility on the people responsible for this,” KHADC Chief Executive Member Titosstarwell Chyne told reporters on Monday.
Stating that he is concerned about the health of children, he said such an incident should not recur in other schools.
“There could be two factors why the students fell ill. Either the medicines they had taken or they were of a sub-standard quality,” Chyne, who is also an MDC from Sohra, said.
Laitlyngkot falls under his constituency.
Chyne said people would have serious doubts on the various health programmes of the government after this incident.
Earlier, a teacher of the school, Iada Kharpomthiah, said 72 students swallowed the tablets after having lunch and 21 had fallen sick. Some had complained of stomach ache and vomiting while some others collapsed, she said. Their condition was stated to be stable.
She claimed the medicine prescribed this time was different from what is usually supplied to the school every year. It was received from the authorities of Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, she said.
All the students have been discharged from Laitlyngkot PHC after their recovery, she added.
Meanwhile, the Health department is ascertaining the reasons behind the students falling ill after consuming the tablets.
Informing that it has not yet been established whether they fell ill because of the tablets, a senior health official said, “The mystery is that if the problem was the medicine, it should have affected all 71 (students). We are trying to find out whether the 21 took the medicine without having their meal or not.”
