The Directorate of Primary Education will test biscuits distributed under school-feeding programmes following reports that some students fell ill after eating them, officials said.
“We have already taken samples of the biscuits and tested them at Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR) laboratories. More tests will be done to rule out any confusion about the quality of the biscuits,” Mashiur Rahman, project director of the European Commission assisted, school-feeding project, told Dhaka Tribune on Monday.
Recently, some students of a primary school at Hatibandha upazila in Lalmonirhat district apparently fell sick after taking the high protein biscuits distributed through the feeding programme.
However, Mashiur said he visited the area and found that it was an incident of mass hysteria, and the quality of the biscuits had nothing to do with the children falling ill.
“The quality of the biscuits of the school-feeding programmes is tested by a quality control agency, and the quality is up to the mark,” he said.
After the incident, parents in different parts of the country have prohibited their children from eating the biscuits, fearing they will fall ill.
Under the nearly Tk2bn, EC-funded project, 351,000 students of 1,295 government and non-government schools in 10 upazilas receive 75g of nutritious biscuits every day. The project started in 2011 and is expected to end in 2014.
In 2010, about 91 students reportedly fell ill in Gaibandha after taking the high protein biscuits.
The Dhaka-based International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddrb) investigated the incident and found it was mass hysteria and the quality of the biscuits was up to the mark.
