In an effort to curb incidents of foodborne disease outbreaks in Buffalo City Metro schools, the metro is implementing a major action plan that will see health practitioners being employed and the South African Police Service roped in.
This comes after a number of incidents in schools since 2016 leading to hundreds of pupils falling ill.
As a result of the outbreaks, the council resolved that BCM should interact with the provincial department of education with regard to the school nutrition programme, and that an action plan to address the foodborne incidents in the metro be developed.
In a report tabled before council last month, head of health, public safety & emergency services Vuyani Lwana said compliance of dairy products with food safety standards, in particular milk and sour milk, was critical as sub-standard dairy products had caused some of the harm experienced in recent foodborne outbreaks in BCM.
“Milk and sour milk are highly perishable and easily susceptible to microbial contamination. Contamination of milk and sour milk is caused by poor handling practices during production, storage, transportation and poor general hygiene practices,” Lwana said in the report.
The action plan includes conducting quarterly inspections at school kitchens, milking sheds and all outlets selling milk and sour milk.
Speaking to the Daily Dispatch on Thursday, metro spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya said: “With regard to routine surveillance of premises, these are currently being conducted and with the staff we manage to cover a lot of ground. There are plans to conduct joint law enforcement and operations with law enforcement and the SA Police Service.”
According to the plan, six environmental health practitioners and three environmental health assistants will be hired.
Lwana said R3.1m was needed for the operations and salaries for the programme in the current financial year.
Milk sampling equipment, six bulk milk tank scoops and 1,000 sampling bottles were also needed. However, Ngwenya said hiring of staff would only be done once funding for the positions was available...