Children enter an elementary school (illustration).

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  • Between Tuesday and this weekend, a hundred children from the same school and their parents were victims of vomiting and diarrhea.

  • The health authorities carried out bacteriological analyzes of the tap water as well as of the dishes that were served in the canteen.

  • For now, the track of water contamination has been ruled out by the analysis results.

Last Tuesday, some children from the town of Gragnague, north-east of Toulouse, were sick with vomiting and severe diarrhea.

The next day, this phenomenon affected 40 pupils of the school and two days later, they were 90 to be victims of these symptoms, among which sometimes parents of pupils.

Suspicion quickly fell on tap water and a distribution of bottles was set up.

“For it to be so violent, it's not the classic pattern of gastroenteritis.

We have oriented our research either towards water or food, ”explains Alexandre Pelangeon, engineer responsible for Health and Environment at the departmental delegation of the regional health agency, which has not identified any serious case requiring hospitalization.

The town of Gragnague in Haute-Garonne.

- Maps4News

As of Thursday evening, three bacteriological checks were carried out by the departmental water laboratory at the school and on the network.

"Nothing came out, we did not find any Escherichia coli type bacteria in the samples, so we raised the suspicion on water and the use of the tap", continues the health manager.

Food analyzes in progress

For its part, the departmental direction of the protection of the populations is analyzing the “witness dish” served in the canteen on Tuesday, the day when the first symptoms appeared.

“For the moment the food cause is not ruled out and given the pattern it looks like a collective food poisoning.

If the results come back negative, it can be viral, it will then be necessary to do an analysis of the body fluids, ”continues Alexandre Pelangeon.

But if it is food poisoning in the canteen, how parents could have been contaminated ask some of them on social networks.

The most likely thesis would be that fathers and mothers were infected when they helped their sick children, adding a viral episode to the poisoning.

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  • Gastroenteritis

  • Canteen

  • public school

  • Toulouse

  • Food poisoning

  • Poisoning

  • Health