Children’s accidents – Food Poisoning at School

Food poisoning is often extremely hard to spot and you won’t realise food or drink is contaminated until it is too late. This is because the look, taste and smell of food is rarely affected when it comes to food poisoning.

Food poisoning has the possibility to affect just one person or a group of people depending on how many have consumed the affected food or drink and the quantity of which they have.

The cause of food poisoning comes from toxins which are produced by bacteria. The most common forms being campylobacter, ecoli and salmonella. It is estimated that 5.5 million people suffer from food poisoning each year, including school children who rely on school dinners. When we send our children to school for school dinners we do so expecting them to receive a well cooked and prepared meal that will provide them with nutrients that they need to get them through the school day, what we don’t expect is for them so wind up ill as a result of it.

There are two main causes of food poisoning, which are when you consume food that has not been cooked/prepared properly meaning that bacteria will not have been destroyed or by eating food that has been contaminated because someone didn’t wash the food or their hands properly before handling the food.

Within a school kitchen you expect the hygiene standards to be high as the people who will suffer if they aren’t are children. As children are more vulnerable than adults they could suffer increased symptoms of food poisoning which could last numerous amounts of weeks. Some of these symptoms are vomiting, pain, diarrhoea and in rare cases even damage to the nervous system, paralysis and death.

The symptoms of food poisoning normally take 12 to 48 hours to develop and the symptoms often come on suddenly. A child would have to remain off school whilst they are recovering from the symptoms of food poisoning meaning they would be losing out on their education and you would have to stay off work to look after them meaning a loss of income.

When a child enters the school gates they become the responsibility of the teachers who are looking after them. We expect them to be protected at any cost so having your child suffer as a result of a negligent act leaves the school open to liability.

If your child has suffered whilst at school then get in touch with Accident Consult today. Accident Consult are accident compensation experts and have secured compensation for thousands of people who have suffered due to the negligence of others.

We will work to win you compensation on the behalf of your child. It is your legal and civil right to claim for compensation after an accident that should have been avoided.

Call us today on 08081 68 69 70 or alternatively fill in our online claim form and one of our advisors will get back to you.