Alipurduar, July 10: The Jalpaiguri health department has ordered an inquiry into the incident in which four children fell ill after consuming medicine allegedly administered by a health staff member. All the children were from Kalchini tea estate.

The acting chief medical officer of health (CMOH) in Jalpaiguri, Vikram Singh Basumata, said: “We have started a probe. We will instruct the health staff members of sub-centres in closed tea gardens to work more cautiously from now on to avoid this kind of incident in future. They will give medicines to the children in the presence of guardians,” he said.

Basumata said the dose of Cloroquine and Primaquine, the medicines which were given to the children on Saturday, is normally for 14 days. But in closed tea gardens, the health employees are instructed to reduce the dose to five days as children there generally suffer from malnutrition and are not be able to tolerate a higher dose than this, the officer said.

Like all other medicines these drugs, too, have their side effects and as a result headache and nausea can occur, the acting CMOH said.

He also hinted that the four boys might have had other problems as well.

Last Saturday, Shila Pal, an assistant at a health sub-centre in Kalchini tea estate, had visited Goodam line. She had collected blood slides and given medicines to Nitesh Mohali, Sagar Munda, Sanjoy Kaor, Anand Oraon, all aged between 9 and 11 years.

Immediately, the children complained of acute headache, restlessness and started vomiting. All the four were taken to Latabari health centre from where Nitesh was shifted to Alipurduar hospital in a critical condition. He is still in hospital and his condition has not improved much.

Protesting against the incident, women of Kalchini tea garden demonstrated in front of the office of the pradhan of gram panchayat for several hours yesterday demanding an inquiry.

Prem Lama, the pradhan of the Kalchini gram panchayat, said he had written to higher officials of health department to conduct an enquiry. He claimed the health employee should not give the same dose of medicines to the children of closed tea gardens.