About 110 hostel students of Bishop Heber College are undergoing treatment at the CSI Mission Hospital here for suspected food poisoning.
The students were admitted to the hospital from since Wednesday morning, after they developed dehydration caused by continuous vomiting and diarrhoea, according to college sources.
Though the affected students were out of danger, they were responding to treatment only slowly and are still being administered fluids. The college had has deputed teams of teachers and students to look after the inpatients, while parents had started arriving to shift the admitted students to hospitals elsewhere or to home.
Officials of food and nutrition department have reportedly collected samples of food and water which the students had consumed on Tuesday night, for testing.The college has also sent samples of food and water for testing to an advanced microbiology lab in another city college.
It was thought initially that water contamination was the cause, but the college authorities now suspect that the problem might have been with the eggs the affected students had consumed.
Over 700 students stay in six campus hostels, including one exclusively for foreign students. As a precaution, the college authorities cleaned got all the water tanks in the campus cleaned on Thursday.
