Adamawa State government has clarified that the reported cases of acute watery diarrhea recorded in three wards of Yola North local government area of the state are not cholera outbreak.
Hon. Felix Tangwami, Commissioner for Health and Human Services who clarified during a press conference in Yola, said the acute watery diarrhea whose causative agent is still under investigation.
The Commissioner added that the state government has deployed additional nurses and final-year students of the College of Nursing and Midwifery, Yola to manage the situation.
“In rainy seasons, we often encounter acute watery diarrhea from taking contaminated food and water. We conducted an emergency meeting at the operation center on Sunday.
“There were reports that people are saying that we don’t want to give information on the epidemic. Every person was given treatment, some were discharged, and some were treated. So far only one death was recorded at the hospital while other deaths were recorded in the communities due to poor handling of the epidemic,” Tangwami said.
He explained that samples of the patients have been taken to the National Center for Disease Control (NCDC), as the state government is not resting on its oars in tackling the epidemic, adding that the result of the laboratory tests is being awaited.
“It is only when laboratory tests have proven that the acute watery diarrhea is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholera that a cholera outbreak will be established in the state.
“When there is an outbreak of an epidemic, there is a procedure we always follow because you cannot just conclude without a laboratory test. Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT) was done at the infectious disease center at the specialist hospital.
“Some of the samples were taken for culture at the NCDC so that we will know the causative organism. Of course, when there are outbreaks that are similar to familiar epidemics, we must conduct tests,” he said.
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