Diarrhoea kills 5 in Onitsha, 50 hospitalised

Okodili Ndidi, Onitsha - 15.02.2008

FIVE children have been reported dead and over 50 are receiving treatment in various hospitals at Amafor West area of Nkpor, an outskirts of Onitsha, Anambra State, following an outbreak of diarrhoea with vomiting.

A medical practitioner in the area, Ndubuisi Donatus Uzoigwe, who confirmed the outbreak to newsmen, said there were no primary health care centre and health workers to enlighten the parents on the dangers of the disease.

Uzoigwe, proprietor of Ndubuisi Health Care Services Centre, said he had already drawn the attention of various government health agencies at both local and state levels to the alarming rate of the endemic outbreak of diarrhoea with vomiting which hit the area since January this year.

Uzoigwe said he came to know about the morbidity rate when some parents of the victims started trooping in and out of his health centre, demanding for one form of medication or the other, which made him to investigate the vomiting and death of children and thereafter, referred the parents to various private hospitals in the area where some victims were treated and discharged.