Uzbek schoolchildren hospitalised with chemical poisoning
More than 60 children taken to hospital in a serious condition after a local field was treated with a Chinese chemical in Uzbekistan
26.09.2026
Article published on the azattyqasia.org website
On 23 September, 62 pupils from School No.51 in the Guzar District of Uzbekistan’s Kashkadarya Region were taken to hospital with suspected poisoning after chemicals were sprayed on farmland next to the school. This was reported by Ozodlik, the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Uzbek Service, quoting the parents of those affected, as well as some teachers.
According to sources, on 25 September, 33 children aged 7, 8 and 11 were taken to hospital, ten of whom are in intensive care – however, this has not yet been officially confirmed by Uzbekistan’s Health Ministry.
“The children were admitted three days ago but a definitive diagnosis has yet to be determined. Their condition has improved slightly and they are breathing with the aid of a ventilator”, said a man who made a video film in the hospital and sent the footage to Ozodlik.
Parents of the schoolchildren say that after the poisoning, the children who were taken to hospital were given injections and medication and then sent home. However, some of them had to be readmitted later after their condition deteriorated.
One of the parents interviewed by Ozodlik said that some children still cannot eat and have difficulty drinking water.
“Some children remain in a critical condition and are on IVs. There are those who can’t take even take a drop of water. When the staff try to feed them, they immediately throw up”, he said.
The parents also say they asked the local authorities to bring in a toxicologist and other experts from Tashkent to examine their critically ill children. One said that following their complaints, doctors from the region came to the district hospital, but it is unknown whether specialists ever arrived from the capital.
Parents claim that the mass poisoning of the schoolchildren occurred after a local farmer, Shermat Nafasov, treated his field with an unknown chemical. The father of one of the children told Ozodlik that he had spoken to Nafasov, who admitted that he had planted cotton seeds imported from China on his land and that the defoliant he had used to treat his crop had also come from there.
Journalists have so far been unable to contact the farmer.
Ozodlik have made attempts to contact the khokim and the Guzar district’s prosecutor, Bekzod Suyunov and Rustam Saifiyev but with no success. Oybek Buriyev, head of the district’s medical association, has not returned any of our calls.
Mukhridddin Dzhalolov, head of the press office at the Kashkadarya Regional Department of Pre-School and School Education, told Ozodlik on 24 September that only 14 children had been taken to hospital and that all had since been discharged.
However, those children’s parents who spoke to Ozodlik the next day said that the department’s spokesperson had lied and that more than 30 children were still seriously ill in hospital. They claim the local authorities are trying to conceal the incident from the public, adding that the hospital had been cordoned off by members of the National Guard, with no-one, apart from the parents, being allowed in.
