Beijing, January 19:

More than 200 families whose babies fell ill or died after drinking tainted infant formula said today they were turning to China’s highest court to sue the dairy companies responsible in an effort to receive higher compensation and lifelong treatment.

The families’ action poses a challenge to the government’s attempts to bring closure to one of the country’s worst food safety crises in years.

Beijing attorney Xu Zhiyong said lawyers for 213 families mailed an application on

Friday to the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing to sue the 22 dairies that were found selling milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine. The tainted milk has been blamed for

the deaths of six babies and the sickening of nearly 300,000 children.

The lawyers’ previous applications to sue Sanlu Group Co, the dairy at the centre of the scandal, in lower courts in Hebei, where the company is based, have been ignored, he said.

The government and Chinese dairy companies had hoped a nationwide payout scheme proposed by dairy companies would ease public anger.

Instead, it has given embittered and geographically scattered parents a common cause.

Xu said the families were rejecting the proposed payment scheme because they want the dairy firms to provide more compensation and to pay for medical expenses incurred from tainted milk-related problems for the rest of the victims’ lives.

The dairies involved have proposed a 1.1 billion yuan ($160 million) compensation plan that would give families whose children died 200,000 yuan ($29,000), while others would receive 30,000 yuan ($4,380) for serious cases of kidney stones and 2,000 yuan ($290) for less severe cases.

Another 200 million yuan ($29 million) would go to a fund to cover bills for lingering health problems and medical costs related to tainted milk until victims turn 18.

Xu said the lawsuit seeks 36 million yuan ($5.3 million) in total compensation - 314,000 yuan ($46,000) to families whose babies died or were seriously sickened, 24,000 yuan for hospitalised but less serious cases and 12,000 yuan for those who received outpatient treatment.

He said the suit was being filed in the Supreme People’s Court because the scan-dal has had a nationwide impact.