A new spate of poisonings from free school lunches was recorded in Indonesia’s West Java province, where 1,117 children got sick just this week. First reported by BBC Indonesia, the new wave of illnesses comes after 800 students fell ill across the West Java and Central Sulawesi provinces last week. Students complained of stomachaches, dizziness, nausea, and even shortness of breath. A flagship of President Prabowo Subianto’s 2024 election campaign, the country’s free school lunch program serves 80 million schoolchildren at a cost of $28 billion and is one of the most expensive programs of its kind globally. Non-governmental organizations have called for a halt to the program, which before the recent spate of poisonings they said had caused 6,452 children to get sick since it first started in January. Indonesia’s coordinating minister for community empowerment, Muhaimin Iskandar, told the BBC there were no plans to stop the program.
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