De­spite in­ten­sive clean­ing of the TML Pri­ma­ry school in San Fer­nan­do, a five-year-old child was hos­pi­talised yes­ter­day—two days af­ter her school­mates be­gan vom­it­ing at school.

Some of those pupils are still ward­ed at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Gulf View Med­ical and the South­ern Med­ical Clin­ic in San Fer­nan­do.

Un­con­firmed re­ports say 76 pupils ex­pe­ri­enced bouts of ill­ness on Tues­day out of which 40 plus stu­dents sought med­ical help at a health in­sti­tu­tion.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, the par­ent of the five-year-old child said she took her daugh­ter to the South­ern Med­ical Clin­ic on Thurs­day af­ter the child com­plained to vom­it­ing and di­ar­rhoea.

Doc­tors told the par­ent that the child was suf­fer­ing from a vi­ral in­fec­tion which caused gas­troen­teri­tis. While the school is gen­er­al­ly clean, the par­ent said she is still puz­zled as to what caused the chil­dren to fall ill.

“As it is, we are not get­ting in­for­ma­tion so we do not know what caused this,” the par­ent said. She not­ed that the air con­di­tion units were ser­viced reg­u­lar­ly and the school was gen­er­al­ly well main­tained.

An­oth­er par­ent called on the Min­istry of Health to bring in for­eign ex­perts to do an as­sess­ment of the school.

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the PTA Roger Ra­jan told Guardian Me­dia that he too was clue­less as to what caused the pupils to fall ill. He said two pro­fes­sion­al firms were hired to de­con­t­a­m­i­nate and fu­mi­gate the school.

“The walls were wiped and they blast­ed the school to make sure that every­thing was san­i­tary,” he added. He lament­ed that the PTA had re­ceived no up­date or com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the school prin­ci­pal with re­spect to any re­ports or in­for­ma­tion from the Health Of­fi­cials.

In a note, to par­ents, Ra­jan wrote, “Par­ents please note that the PTA Ex­ec­u­tive is deeply con­cerned about the wel­fare of the chil­dren. May Al­lah make it easy for all the chil­dren who have fall­en ill and may their re­cov­ery be a speedy one. We are aware that the Health De­part­ment has called sev­er­al par­ents en­quir­ing about their chil­dren and un­con­firmed in­for­ma­tion is that they are still try­ing to un­der­stand what is af­fect­ing our chil­dren. Please keep your chil­dren wel­fare at the fore­front. Any in­for­ma­tion trans­mit­ted to the PTA will, in turn, be con­veyed to our par­ents.”

In a state­ment to par­ents on Wednes­day, the school’s act­ing prin­ci­pal Wahi­da Mo­hammed-Nar­ine said, “This is to in­form you that some stu­dents from the Stan­dard Four class vom­it­ed yes­ter­day. The par­ents were ad­vised to keep these chil­dren at home once they are ill. The class­rooms were sani­tised and the health au­thor­i­ties/school su­per­vi­sors were con­tact­ed. We will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion and keep you post­ed. If your chil­dren are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing any symp­toms of ill­ness, please keep them away from school.”

The min­istry said the mat­ter was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.