The Federal Government on Wednesday dismissed rumour of a Cholera outbreak at Queen’s College, Yaba Lagos, which reportedly caused pandemonium in the school a few days ago.
Recall that there was report of alleged outbreak of airborne flu-like illness among students of Queens College and other schools across the Lagos State. Which the State Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi earlier disclosed that an investigative team comprising of officials of State Epidemiology team, Primary Health Care Services and Environmental Health Department of Lagos Mainland Local Government has been set up by the Ministry and dispatched to unravel the cause of the illnesses.
Meanwhile, Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Arc. Sonny Echono, speaking in Abuja at the pre-event press briefing to mark the 2019 World Teachers’ Day, said what happened was that some students were infected with flu which he said was common in this season of rainfall.
Also, Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, Who addressed the news conference on behalf of the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, had asked the Permanent Secretary to respond to a question from a journalist on the findings of the ministry.
The Permanent Secretary, Echono, said the Federal Government has taken some measures to ensure the 104 unity schools located across the country, have active ambulances to transport students in need of emergency care to healthcare facilities.
He added that all unity schools would henceforth be attached to government hospitals or private hospitals in cases where there are no government hospitals close to the school.
He said: “We have taken some policy measures at the ministry that all our unity schools must be attached to government hospital of close proximity where the government hospital is not very close, we will allow them to also be attached to private hospitals not more than 3 to 5 hundred metres for rapid response.
“We have also directed that from next year, all those that do not have ambulances we will provide ambulances to all our unity schools dedicated to attending to all these and similar cases immediately. Many of them already have but some including queen’s college does not have and we are going to be helping queen’s college to acquire one in the next few days.”
While charging all other unity schools to put preventive measures in check to prevent similar epidemics, he said the government was engaging a few more health personnel within the ministry’s release and approval threshold to assist the present health personnel at the school clinics.
“There was no cholera epidemic outbreak in Queen’s college, nothing waterborne or food-related. we had a very unusual number of cases of flu, cold and malaria. This is a flu season.
“When you have so many people together because it is airborne, it is very easy to transmit and that is what transpired. It’s now under control maybe only three or four were at the clinic as at the time I visited but the first three, four days it was a huge challenge.
“It’s unfortunate this happened, many of the kids just came in within one week of arriving at the school premises but we apologise we have these disruptions. Many are also coming back now and we hope all other schools will take measures to ensure that this does not happen in other institutions.”
“Right now most schools are headed by nurses, health attendants, administratively we are taking measures not only to ensure that it doesn’t happen in future, but we are also ready to increase the number of personnel,” he added.