STUDENTS DIED AFTER EATING IN ABUJA SCHOOL, WATCH YOUR KIDS

The breaking news this morning is about three students in an FCT Kubwa school who died after food offered to them in the school. This must have thrown the parents into deep mourning and destroyed the school completely.  I am sure many parents will be withdrawing children from the school right now and enrolling them with another school around, but will that stop the occurrence of another sad incident or make their children safe? This is highly debatable. Should they not also carry out checks on their children, find the food source and know if their children have eaten part of the contaminated foods.

It is extra stress for a parent to be worried about the welfare of a child, what they will be eating or who they play with while in school. To be safe rather than to be sorry, it is important to train children to avoid food outside the home but more important to provide them with lunch and snacks in their school provision that will sustain them till they get back home. It is better you provide the meals yourself instead of providing cash for the kids to buy what they want, that will be a risk as kids may not make right decisions as to what to buy or eat.

Some schools even insist that they must be the ones to provide food and drink for children under their watch as they do not want to have any liability from what any child brings in and eat. Parents however sometimes do not also trust the school enough that they will pay proper attention to food served. Truly, it is just another avenue for the school to make extra revenue and as such parents should insist on providing snacks and lunch for their own children during
Complications after eating food should be traced back to know exactly what the cause is, especially if it is food poisoning, to determine the exact type of poisoning, the food involved and check others who have eaten the food to ensure the spread is curtailed. In a system like ours in Nigeria, there may not be any organised system to trace back and keep the incident in record.
In order not to be sorry or start looking for Government intervention when not necessary, it is better to prevent our children from ingesting food from unsafe sources.