The reason for the mass poisoning of children in Crimea was poor quality kefir

The reason for the poisoning of 192 pupils of kindergartens in the Crimean city of Dzhanka was Kefir containing the pathogen of dysentery, the first deputy chief sanitary doctor of Ukraine Lyudmila Mukharskaya said at a press conference on Sunday.

"Bacteriological studies have shown that kefir contained the causative agent of Dysenteria Zonne - the same species that was found in patients," said Mukharskaya.

Deputy Minister of Health of Ukraine Volodymyr Yurchenko, in turn, told reporters that 54 sick children have already been discharged from the hospital, and 135 children who undergo treatment, a mild severity, RIA Novosti reports.

“In a state of moderate severity, only three people,” Yurchenko said, adding that all children would be under the supervision of doctors for a week.

Dzhankoy's preschool institutions received kefir produced at a small dairy in the city of Genichesk, Kherson region, in the south of Ukraine. Currently, the dairy is closed, doctors check the health of the enterprise employees.

“We will discuss the question of whether kefir is needed in the list of products for children,” Yurchenko said.

On Thursday and Friday, children from eight kindergartens of Dzhankoy began to go to the hospital, presumably, with food poisoning. The Minister of Health of Ukraine Vasily Knyazevich told reporters that dairy products could be the cause of poisoning. In total, on September 3-5, with a diagnosis of gastroenterocolite, 192 children born in 2003-2008, and pupils of eight preschool institutions of the city were hospitalized.

In Dzhanka, to verify the current sanitary and epidemic situation, localization, stabilization and elimination of the consequences of the emergency, the government commission, headed by the Minister of Health Knyazevich, works.

President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko instructed the Prosecutor General Vladimir Medvedko to immediately organize an investigation into the reasons for the poisoning of kindergarten pupils. The Dzhankoy prosecutor's office opened a criminal case on the fact of mass poisoning.