By Amy Musgrave
President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced three interventions to deal with the food contamination crisis, with one of them specifically focusing on protecting children from exposure to harmful substances.
The Basic Education Department has been instructed to immediately issue a circular to provincial education departments and all schools on best practice protocols for preventing and managing foodborne illnesses within schools.
Over the last few weeks alone, foodborne illnesses have claimed the lives of at least 22 children. In Naledi in Soweto, six learners who were friends, died after consuming food from a spaza shop. The youngest was just six-years-old.
“By the start of the new school year, the Department of Basic Education and school governing bodies, together with the Department of Health, will review and update the guidelines for schools on the management of suppliers of foodstuffs to public schools. This will include tuck shops operated at these schools,” the president said on Friday night.
It would be complemented by a public education campaign aimed at communities, spaza shops, tuck shops, informal traders and other retailers on health, safety and hygiene regulations, the identification of hazardous products, and regulations that applied to hazardous products and legal consequences.
While multidisciplinary teams were still trying to get to the bottom of the food contamination crisis, Ramaphosa confirmed that tests from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases showed the deaths in Naledi were directly attributed to Terbufos, a highly hazardous chemical used as a pesticide.
“After stringent testing, a chip packet found on one of the children who had died, had traces of Terbufos on both the inside and the outside of the packet,” he said.
Terbufos is registered in South Africa for agricultural use and may not be sold for general household use. However, it is being informally sold as a “street pesticide” for domestic use in townships and informal settlements to control rats.
During investigations into the Naledi deaths, inspectors found that at some shops, food was being stored next to pesticides and detergents.
“Even as our investigations are ongoing, it is critical to understand that this is not a problem confined to spaza shops and other informal traders. The unregulated use of restricted pesticides in communities has become a growing problem, with devastating consequences.”
Another chemical, Aldicarb, and an organophosphate known as Galephirimi, were being sold by street vendors and hawkers to control rat infestations.
Aldicarb has been banned for use in South Africa since 2016.
The president said that the ministers of Basic Education and Health and other government departments would classify certain pesticides and insecticides not suitable for home use as “dangerous objects”, and they may not be brought or used on school premises.
This would be undertaken in terms of the Regulations on Safety Measures for Public Schools.
On the way forward, a ministerial health advisory committee was being established to develop medium- and long-term prevention measures. This committee would comprise experts such as toxicologists, paediatricians, chemical pathologists, epidemiologists and forensic pathologists.
All deaths of patients who were aged 12 and below would now be reported on the Notifiable Medical Condition Surveillance System.
“An electronic medical certification of death system will be established to allow the national Department of Health to access cause of death information immediately after a death is certified,” Ramaphosa said.
He said few words could adequately convey “our sadness and our pain as a nation”.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with their families as they go through the pain and the anguish of losing their children.
“Losing a child is something no parent should ever have to endure. The young children who died weren’t just children of their families, they were our children,” Ramaphosa said.
As the country adopted the new interventions and measures, the president once again appealed to parents to protect their children.
“As consumers and parents, if we buy food or send our children to buy food, it must only be from places that are licensed to sell foodstuffs and that observe food safety regulations.
“We must check that food is prepared in a clean and hygienic area. We must make sure that foodstuffs being sold have clear branding and labels, and that they are not past their sell-by date.
“We must educate our children about food safety and teach them to check for this labelling themselves,” he said.
He pleaded with anyone who saw fake foodstuffs and expired foodstuffs being sold, to contact the National Consumer Commission.
INSIDE EDUCATION
