The Ministry of Education advanced that a Panama laboratory has proven that the public school breakfast milk that caused hundreds of children to get sick was contaminated by inadequate food handling at the factory where it was produced. More than 600 children were intoxicated on 28 January by milk the Nutrilac firm supplied to public schools in San Francisco de Macor?s, La Vega, Salcedo, Moca and San Jose de Ocoa. Several of the children suffered from acute diarrhea and vomiting that required their hospitalization for a day. The tests carried out in Panama showed that the milk was contaminated by bacteria from the nasal cavities of workers at the manufacturing plant that produced the milk. The report says that the workers manipulated the product without using hygiene measures such as protector gloves and facial masks. The public school breakfast program is one of the most important of the Ministry of Education. Many low income parents send their children to school because they know they will get a nutritious breakfast. But the poisoning affected the credibility of the program. The Ministry reacted by suspending the purchase of milk from the Nutrilac plant, and reinstating the use of small box cartons to package the milk, and not the plastic bags they had resorted to, using savings to serve more milk portions benefiting more public school children.
