No fewer than one hundred people have so far been confirmed dead as a result of a continued cholera infection that is ravaging Jigawa state within one month.
The permanent secretary Jigawa state ministry of health Dr Salisu Mu’azu confirmed the figure while speaking to news men Wednesday in Dutse.
He said, “as of last Sunday we have recorded over 100 death cases from 5,000 infected cases while currently over 251 are currently on admission at various heath facilities as result of the Outbreak in 19 out of 27 local government in the state” he said.
Dr Mu’azu related the causes of the outbreak to use of conterminated water, vegetables food supply from river banks and lack of hygienic behaviours by the people.
According to him, out of 19 affected local governments, Hadejia recorded the highest number of cases.
While speaking on measures to control the outbreak, the permanent secretary said, Jigawa state government with the support from Unicef and Lafiya program formed a rapid response team desperse across three zones in the state.
He said, state government opened up isolation centres in Hadejia, Gwaram and embarked on training surveillance, community awareness, establishment of treatment centres and spraying of the communities.
When SINL Nigeria Online visited some part of the affected communities in the state like Zareku town area in Miga local government, it was discovered that between Friday night to Saturday eight people have been confirmed to have died as a result of the disease.
Similarly, a medical staff at the Zareku primary healthcare centre, who sought for anonymity, explained that the incident started on Thursday night and persisted till Friday where five people died on the same day.
“We recorded death of eight people, seven female and one male who died as a result of cholera disease in Zareku” he said.
He maintained that from the commencement of the outbreak about 268 suspected cases were recorded while 145 cases were admitted to the healthcare centre.
The medical staff who sought for more help to tackle the situation decried shortage of protection equipments and medicine for the patients.
Also speaking to news men, the village head of Zareku town Malam Abdulqadir Ibrahim, confirmed the incident.
