The Murmansk Region Office of the Investigative Committee has opened a criminal investigation into a crime under part 1 of Article 236 of the RF Penal Code (breach of sanitary code inflicting mass sickness or poisoning of children) after 10 children between 2 and 7 years of age got salmonellosis.

According to investigators, in the period between 6 and 20 May 2016, the officials of day care facility No 49 in the town of Apatity in charge of sanitation failed to provide proper control over keeping of production spaces, process of cooking meals for the children and compliance of the facility’s staff with the sanitary code, including cooking of precooked meals. The children got ill because of the said violations and because they had eaten more than one dish infected with salmonellosis, while the bacteria should have died of proper thermal treatment of the food.

At present the investigators are identifying those guilty of the epidemic. They have assigned necessary tests and are carrying out other investigative operations to find out all the details of the incident. The investigation is ongoing.