No bad genie in this bottle

AIIMS doctors rubbish an SMS that has been doing the rounds claiming a popular soft drink carries a new kind of virus

No bad genie in this bottle

AIIMS doctors rubbish an SMS that has been doing the rounds claiming a popular soft drink carries a new kind of virus

An SMS that has been in circulationu00a0 for sometime is making people jittery about the lemon-based drinks in the market. The SMS reads: "Don't drink Nimbooz because a new Virus High Bone Fever (HBF) is spreading from it. And the information is coming from Delhi AIIMS".

But there is nothing to worry. According to the doctors, there is no such virus like HBF and nothing like this fever has ever existed. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) from which the SMS is supposed to have originated, has rubbished this claim. "We have not said anything like that. Last year also, someone circulated this message with a name of a specific doctor in it. If we will conduct any study like that, it will be made public soon and will not and will not be send it in a form of messages," said Dr YK Gupta, Official Spokesperson, AIIMS.

Precedent
According to the officials, last year also, these kind of messages were circulated among the general public. Some feel that as the summers are approaching, this is a technique to bring down the popularity of a particular product.

"There are frauds SMS/emails being circulated that are raising concerns about the safety of Nimbooz, the popular nimbu-paani drink by PepsiCo. We want to assure our consumers that Nimbooz is 100 per cent safe for all consumers," said PepsiCo India Spokesperson.

"Nimbooz is a juice-based drink made from purified water, nimbu juice, sugar and a permitted commonly used preservative to give our consumers a product that is completely safe. Nimbooz is made in state-of-the-art plants which are HACCP (a global food safety and quality certification) certified to deliver safe and contamination-free products," added the spokesperson.

Meanwhile, those who received the messages got apprehensive about having the drink. But a lot have not stopped taking the drink as they are sure about its quality.

"Such type of messages keeps coming and we know they are not at all true. I have no doubt about the company and Nimbooz. I have been drinking it from years and I have all my faith in it," said Mayank Sharma, a CA student.