Nearly 2,000 fall ill in a week on Indonesia's free school meals

Nearly 2,000 students and teachers in Indonesia fell ill this week after eating meals from President Prabowo Subianto's free nutrition programme. The Associated Press, citing officials on Saturday, put the figure at about 1,950 people across East Java, Central Java, West Sumatra, Aceh and South Sulawesi. No deaths have been reported. Dozens were taken to hospital with diarrhoea, vomiting and stomach pain.

The largest single outbreak was at State Senior High School 1 Lasem in Rembang, Central Java. Principal Juhartutik told reporters that 752 students and 25 teachers became sick after Wednesday's lunch. The school has 40 toilets. Two were under renovation. Pupils queued for the rest. The school sent nearly 1,200 pupils and 95 staff home. Juhartutik said a food taster had already set aside grilled chicken that looked slimy.

On Tuesday, 664 to 730 people fell ill at an Islamic boarding school in Sidoarjo, East Java. On Wednesday, 49 people were sick in Nganjuk, also in East Java, after fried rice, chicken and tofu. In Agam, West Sumatra, 237 students and teachers were affected. Eggs were named as a suspect. On Thursday, about 170 people fell ill in Tana Toraja, South Sulawesi.

The programme is called Makan Bergizi Gratis, or MBG. Prabowo launched it in January 2025. It is now one of the largest school-meal schemes in the world. Officials have said it reaches tens of millions of people a day. The National Nutrition Agency runs the kitchens.

The week's cases sit on a much larger ledger. Lawmaker Charles Honoris, citing health department data, said 50,000 people had been affected by food poisoning linked to the scheme as of 1 September. Health Ministry surveillance reported 50,059 people in 560 incidents across 245 districts in 36 provinces as of 2 September. The Network for Education Watch Indonesia had counted more than 37,000 cases by early August.

Prabowo has played the ratio. He has said that of more than a billion meals served, poisoning cases were 0.0017 percent and called that a proud result. Komnas HAM, the human rights commission, took the other view on Friday. It asked the police for a transparent investigation and said repeated poisoning threatened children's right to life.

Sudaryono, the new head of the National Nutrition Agency, called the latest kitchens a case of deliberate negligence. He said they had ignored the agency's own food-safety rules. Earlier outbreaks were blamed on late delivery of cooked food and poor storage. In June, investigators detained former agency chief Dadan Hindayana and two deputies in a corruption case. The scheme has already had a leadership change.

The logistics are the weak point. Meals are cooked in central kitchens and driven to schools across an archipelago of 17,000 islands. Heat, traffic and distance turn a safe lunch into a risk. A taster in Lasem could see slime on chicken. Many schools have no taster and no cold chain.

The political cost is rising. Students in Surabaya protested in June over fuel prices, military involvement in civilian work, and the meal programme itself. Honoris, who sits outside the governing coalition, called the poisonings a failure of the system. Regional governments have begun to pause deliveries. Agam suspended distribution pending an evaluation. The Sidoarjo kitchen was stopped after Tuesday's outbreak.

Indonesia is trying to do at national scale what smaller countries do with local kitchens and daily inspection. The ambition is nutrition. The immediate product, in too many schools this week, was a queue for the toilet. Police now have a file. The kitchens that stay open will be judged on whether the next lunch stays down.