Nearly 2,000 Sickened by Indonesia's Free School Meal Program in a Single Week, Bringing Total Cases to Over 50,000

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto's signature Free Nutritious Meals program sickened nearly 2,000 students, teachers, and boarding school pupils this week alone, according to the Associated Press. The outbreaks hit five provinces between Tuesday and Thursday: East Java, Central Java, West Sumatra, Aceh, and South Sulawesi.

The program is known in Indonesia by its acronym, MBG, short for Makan Bergizi Gratis. It's one of Prabowo's flagship policies, aimed at improving child nutrition nationwide, and it costs billions of dollars.

What happened this week

The worst outbreak hit State Senior High School 1 Lasem in Rembang, Central Java. According to Rembang Health Office head Ali Syofi'i, 752 students and 25 teachers came down with diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and stomach pain after eating an MBG lunch on Wednesday.

Headteacher Juhartutik told BBC News Indonesia the school has 40 toilets and couldn't handle the number of sick kids. "They had diarrhoea and took turns using the toilet," she said. The school sent nearly 1,200 students and 95 staff home, and some were hospitalized.

In Sidoarjo, East Java, 730 people, mostly students at the Manbaul Hikam Islamic boarding school, got sick a day earlier. Sidoarjo health office chief Lakhsmie Herawati Yuwantina said 706 of them had already been discharged and were recovering at home, per the AP. BBC reported some students were too weak to walk and had to be moved in wheelchairs.

West Sumatra's Agam regency reported 276 suspected cases, serious enough that officials suspended food distribution from the local nutrition service center pending an investigation. Aceh's Bener Meriah regency had 15 elementary students and a principal treated for dizziness and nausea. And in Tana Toraja, South Sulawesi, 152 students from two junior high schools ended up in three separate hospitals, prompting Regent Zadrak Tombeq to order hospitals to prioritize their care.

No deaths have been reported. Local authorities are testing food samples, and BBC reported parents and teachers describing slimy chicken, undercooked meat, and food with a "fishy odour."

The larger picture

According to Health Ministry surveillance data cited by the AP, food poisoning tied to MBG has sickened 50,059 people in 560 separate cases across 245 districts and cities in 36 provinces since the program launched in January 2025.

National Nutrition Agency chief Sudaryono told a hearing with the House's Commission IX, which oversees health issues, that internal reviews found 80% to 90% of past incidents were tied to failures to follow basic food safety procedures: storage, how ingredients were received, temperature control, and blowing past consumption deadlines. Food sat out too long or wasn't handled properly before it went in front of kids.

The head of the National Nutrition Agency also said, according to BBC, that if negligence or criminal conduct is found in these cases, "we cannot help" but let it play out, an acknowledgment that accountability may follow if investigators find deliberate wrongdoing rather than simple incompetence.

Response and context

This week's response wasn't nothing. Juhartutik said the government has committed to covering medical costs for the Rembang victims, and the local food distributor, headed by Achmad Sholeh Syarifudin, publicly apologized and said it would conduct a full operational review. Local officials in Tana Toraja moved fast to get hundreds of sick kids into hospital beds.

Supporters of MBG point out that the program is trying to solve a real problem: child nutrition in a country of over 270 million people spread across thousands of islands, where logistics for a national meals program are genuinely difficult. Scaling any government food program to that size will produce failures somewhere. The question is whether 50,000 sickened people in under two years is an acceptable failure rate for a program this expensive, or evidence the execution model itself is broken.

AP's coverage, and the identical wire-service version running in outlets like News4Jax and Local10, laid out the numbers cleanly but didn't press on where the accountability actually lands. No named contractor has been fined, no criminal charges have been filed as of this reporting, and no timeline exists for when investigations into Rembang, Sidoarjo, or Agam will conclude.

Indonesia's government has repeatedly promised reviews and corrective action after past outbreaks under this same program. Whether this week's incidents produce anything more than another apology and another promise, with the program's cost and scale climbing regardless, remains to be seen.