Food Poisoning in the University of Peshawar

Last week, I took my friend and colleague Asher Samuel (shown in the photo) to Khyber Teaching hospital when he got severe diarrhea with blood in stool. Asher had supped at the Teacher’s Mess in the university’s canteen, generally called the STC. Soon after going home, he started to have motions and felt pain in his groins and lower back. He didn’t have ready access to medicine and had to rely on soft food and fluids for several hours. However, when he detected blood in his excreta, he became worried and asked me to accompany him to the hospital.

asher 5z5QM 50

The doctor on duty in the OPD at the Khyber Teaching Hospital looked curiously at Asher when I told him that he was having digestive trouble. Soon he was asking Asher questions like where he came from and whether he was a boarder and ate in the canteen. Then he prescribed the expected metronidazole tablets along with an analgesic brand for pain relief. While we got a cab to get Asher back to the office, I wondered about the doctor’s investigation. Something felt like revealing a story behind his manner of asking questions. Then I came to know it that very evening.

It happened that the waiter Nawaz, who works at the STC, joined me on the road as I walked out to the university’s gate to get my supper at a small hostel. I mentioned Asher’s case to him and asked if there was something wrong with the food that night. He confirmed my suspicion, saying that several people had been to hospital due to diarrhea after eating a meal in the STC on the night of August 31st 2008. Nawaz said that three dishes were unhealthy – two of meat and one of fava beans. Upon my asking, he revealed that the canteen staff does not dispose the leftover but mix it with the rest of the dishes and serve it again. They keep the main dishes at room temperature, even after mixing the leftover in it, and thus allow germs to grow in food. Nawaz himself had gone to the hospital for the same reason as Asher.

This is not the first time that food poisoning is affecting the residents of university campus. However, those who are affected rarely complain against carelessness in food handling because there is the general feeling that the administration simply does not take notice of such cases. As Nawaz put it, ‘people know that nobody will try to put things in order.’