The case of the poisoning of high school girls students in Iran continues to make headlines in the media. For the last two weeks, the news of such incidents has come continuously. The first such news came from the city of Com on November 30 last year. There, 18 female students of a girls’ high school had to be taken to the hospital after complaining of fatigue, dizziness, and feeling weak. Then the doctors of the hospital had said that those girl students had been poisoned. Since that, such incidents have been happening continuously, in which there has been a lot of speed in the last two weeks.
According to a lengthy report published on the website Cradle.co, by the end of January all such reports had come from the city of Com and all the cases had happened in girls’ high schools. Those students had told that at first, they felt bad smell and then they started having problems like headaches, vomiting, or feeling drowsy. Health officials had then told that they had sent the samples of the patients for examination. Reports from there confirmed that the girls were mildly poisoned.
But despite confirmed reports, concrete arrangements have not been made to stop such incidents. At the end of February, news of such incidents also came from western Pamrant Lorestan. But the victims there weren’t just high school girls. In fact, primary school girls and some other students also became its victims.
Now in the last few days the news of such incidents has come from many provinces. They include Ardebin, Albaroz, Janjan, Khouzestan and Tehran. Thousands of girls in each of these provinces have suffered from symptoms such as feeling nauseous, headache, chest pain, and sometimes fainting. But the mysterious thing is that in the schools where such complaints came, there is no news of even a single teacher or other employee being victimized.
For three years after the occurrence of the first such incident, the investigating officers have not been able to obtain any concrete evidence on the basis of which the cause of these incidents can be told.
Pro-government groups allege that behind these incidents are the hands of anti-Islamic Republic groups, who are trying to overthrow the regime in Iran. These groups say that such groups are exaggerating these incidents on social media, which is being taken advantage of by anti-Iranians like America and Saudi Arabia.
Some media reports have quoted Iranian officials as saying that the reason for these incidents could be ‘mass hysteria’. It has been said in these that among the age group of girls who have become victims, there is a common tendency among them to feel the symptoms on the basis of suspicion. These officials have said that in 1999, complaints of feeling faint after drinking Coca-Cola started coming in Belgium. Later, in the investigation by experts, it was found to be a case of mass hysteria.
