At least two persons have been confirmed killed and 160 others hospitalised in Kano state following a suspected food poisoning.
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Daily Telescope gathered that victims of the food poisoning were said to have drunk an expired citric acid powdered drinks.
Confirming the incident, an Epidemiologist at the Kano state Ministry for Health, Dr Bashir Lawan, said contrary to the speculations, the fever was neither Lassa fever nor yellow fever as claimed by some people.
Dr Lawan said: “Victims are showing symptoms of haematuria (blood urine), dark urine, fever, lethargy and sometimes yellowness of eyes (jaundice). The disease was detected on a 6-yr-old girl on March 6, 2021.
“Initially, we thought it was viral haemarhagic fever, but the results of tests conducted at the National Reference Laboratory, indicated negative for both yellow and Lassa fever respectively. We are still waiting for the result of Dengue fever test
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Dr Lawan said the disease had spread to eight local government areas of the state namely Gwarzo, Dawakin Tofa, Fagge, Municipal, Gwale and Bunkure.
“However, government has put some preventive measures against the spread of the disease to other local governments, while health personnel were deployed to the affected local governments to handle the situation,” he said.
He added that samples of water from a borehole at Dandolo graveyard, the expired mixed drinks and citric acid powder had been sent for test with a view to ascertaining the root cause of the disaster.
Daily Telescope learnt that, Kano state government has designed some hospitals across the state for the treatment of victims of the food poisoning. The hospitals include Sheikh Muhammad Jidda hospital, Shehu Waziri Gidado hospital and Rano General Hospital.
Others are Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Murtala Muhammad Specialist Hospital, Kano Infectious Disease popularly known as Asibitin Zana and two other hospital at Dawakin Tofa local government.
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