Ivory Coast : a mysterious illness causes 7 deaths and 59 hospitalisation
- Posted on 22/09/2023 17:32
- Film
- By abelozih@sante-education.tg
Extract from the article: Seven people died on Sunday in a village in central Côte d'Ivoire near Bouaké, where 59 others were hospitalised due to an illness of as yet unknown origin, hospital and local sources told AFP on Monday 18 September.
Seven
people died on Sunday in a village in central Côte d'Ivoire near Bouaké, where
59 others were hospitalised due to an illness of as yet unknown origin,
hospital and local sources told AFP on Monday 18 September.
Seven
people died, five at Bouaké University Hospital and two in Niangban, a village
around thirty kilometres to the south, a hospital source said.
« We
have a total of 59 (people) hospitalised at Bouaké University Hospital, most of
them children and some adolescents. The symptoms of the disease are
vomiting" and diarrhoea. Those who died were aged between 5 and 12. Around
fifty people were at Bouaké University Hospital. On Sunday 17 September, a
nurse's aide told me that some children were dying »,
said the head of the village of Niangban, Emmanuel Kouamé N'Guessan.
Food
contamination?
A
close friend of the chief, Célestin Kouadio Koffi, said that rumour had it that
maize porridge was the source of the contamination. Zitanick Amoin Yao, the
mother of the first victim, said she had bought some porridge and given it to
her son. After wanting to go to the toilet, she said, « he started
vomiting when I gave him the medicine they gave me at Djébonouan
hospital."We went back to the hospital and they told us to go to the
university hospital in Bouaké, where he died at the age of three », she
recounted.
Agnès
Aya Konan also lost her daughter.She refuses to accuse the vendor, but says
that her children ate the same porridge on Sunday.In February, in the village
of Kpo-Kahankro, also near Bouaké, two people were sentenced to five years'
imprisonment after contamination with clostridium, a bacterium that killed 16
people according to an official report, and 21 according to villagers.
Elom
AKAKPO
