Experts sent by the Ministry of Health have arrived at Haicheng city in northeast China's Liaoning province to investigate a case in which a large number of students fell ill after drinking soymilk last month.
Four scientists from the Ministry of Health and the Chinese Center for Disease Prevention and Control arrived in Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning, on April 9 and began collecting data in Shenyang, Anshan and Haicheng, especially samples from the soy milk producing factory.
The Ministry of Health has also sent an additional three clinicians to Haicheng.
On March 19, about 4,900 students from eight elementary schools in Haicheng drank a certain kind of soymilk and 2,556 of them became sick afterward.
All the experts will carry out the investigation independently and are responsible to scientifically and objectively uncover the case, said an official from the Ministry of Health.
(China Daily April 12, 2003)
