Strange disease ravages Abuja community

About nine children have been reported dead and scores hospitalised in Unguwar Hausawa, a community in Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC). The incidents have raised a medical emergency in the community with residents describing the disease as strange while results of the definitive diagnosis is being awaited by health authorities in the Federal Capital Territory […]

About nine children have been reported dead and scores hospitalised in Unguwar Hausawa, a community in Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC).
The incidents have raised a medical emergency in the community with residents describing the disease as strange while results of the definitive diagnosis is being awaited by health authorities in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Provisional diagnosis by the health authorities, however, showed the infection to be gastroenteritis caused by water or food poisoning.
 Residents are now frightened about the fate of their children with many expressing fear that the death toll could rise.
Muhammad Salisu, 40, lost his nine-year-old daughter to the infection.
“She was sick for about one month before her death,” he said.  He said he could not afford the best healthcare and had to resort to cheaper hospitals in Kabusa and Sabon Wuse, Niger State before she died. 
Salisu said when the girl took ill, he suspected that it was malaria so he bought antimalarial drugs from a patent medicine store in the community but was surprised that the malaria, unlike earlier cases, persisted.
He said at the hospital it was said to be typhoid and that she required surgery.
“Several things were removed from her belly and a tube attached to her after the surgery,” he said but regretted that she did not survive.
Hammed Hassan, another resident could not afford healthcare like Salisu. So he resorted to a chemist where he bought drugs when his 10-year-old son complained of stomach upset.
After two weeks of persistent complaint, his stomach swelled before he died.
A mother of three, Huwaila Shuaibu, said two of her children were infected. One of them, Usman, three, is already dead while the fate of the other is still uncertain. The symptoms were similar – swollen stomach. 
 But unlike Huwaila, Ladi Ibrahim, another bereaved mother said her four-year-old son only had swollen leg which she thought was nothing so serious.
When the boy did not show any ‘serious’ sign of illness, she did not deem it fit to visit the hospital instead she used herbal medicine on the leg.
“I was shocked to see his condition worsen few days before his death,” a saddened Ladi wondered how a swollen leg could cause death. She regrets that she would have done more to ensure the survival of the boy.
She expressed fear over her other child that was also infected but was determined to give all what it takes to ensure his survival, “I won’t want to lose another child to this unknown disease,” she said.
 Despite her effort to ensuring that the child survives, Ladi and other residents take personal hygiene with levity and some of them drink from polluted streams and local well.
 Though there are about three boreholes in the community, few could afford the N20 charged to buy a 25 litre of water. As such water is unaffordable to several people especially peasant farmers and those without stable income.

House planning in the community is chaotic; drainages are channelled between houses while latrines are built beside rooms in the unplanned but large populated community near Damagaza, along the Apo-Galadimawa road.
Children, dressed in dirty cloths and without shoes, play freely around the gutters filled with waste while some of them pick sticks, bottle tops, and other items from the stinking gutters. Adults watch the children play in this manner. 
In the community, food vendors see no harm in cooking in such unhygienic environment and visitors are welcomed by a huge refuse heap before the residential areas.
Sanitary condition in the community leaves more to be desired and has been generating concern to some sections of the community.
Pastor Joseph Benjamin resides in the community and described the sanitation in the community as problematic due to the lack of concerted effort toward abating the menace.
Pastor Benjamin who also operates a drugstore in the community said the stomach wrenching stench oozing from the gutters is a pointer to health hazards in the community.
“The environment is dirty and the people are not ready to cooperate,” he said explaining that efforts to engaging residents in environmental sanitation exercise yielded no result.
“Drainages are everywhere and waste water is thrown anyhow. Everywhere smells,” he said.
He said most residents drank rain water collected through their rusted rooftop sheets and kept in unhygienic reservoirs. He did not rule out open defecation as well.
There is no healthcare centre in the community.
However, the community head, Alhaji Abdulhamid Ibrahim, said though residents fetch water from the stream and local well, they only drink water from the borehole.
Alhaji Ibrahim who lost one of his twin children to the infection while another is on admission at Asokoro District Hospital, admitted that sanitation is absent in the community. He said residents have been uncooperative and lackadaisical whenever the issue was raised.
 While lamenting the number of deaths it took for them to understand the importance of keeping good personal and environmental hygiene, he said efforts are on to ensure strict compliance to sanitation.
He said everyone in the community thought the infection was malaria as was always the case but were stunned when the death toll kept rising.
Alhaji Ibrahim, who spoke in Hausa, said more than 20 children were infected.
“We did not know it was serious. We thought it was fever and stomach upset but when one death led to the other, we started being suspicious,” he said.
 He said the residents have been battling with the infection for more than nine months adding that not all cases were reported at the hospital.
Umar Mohammed, another resident who lost his niece to the infection said it was strange. The niece, one-year-old Halima, he said, had protruding belly that hardened and that she could not go to the toilet for more than two weeks before she passed away.
“She did not eat for about five days and became very thin. Her stomach was very hard,” Umar recounted, adding that the experience was unpleasant “especially for a parent to see their child died in that manner.”
“She was so thin and the belly was like that of a pregnant woman and strong as if there was a stone there,” he said adding that she was sick for three months.
 He said despite the perceived strange nature of the sickness, they did not report it to the government or health authorities until two of the chief’s children were infected.
Umar was the person that contacted a non governmental organisation’s facilitator after the death of one of the chief’s daughters last week.
Mrs. Chika Ofo works with Vaccine Network, an NGO that discovers and enlightens rural dwellers that refused to vaccinate their children.
She said upon hearing the case on a Sunday she paid for the chief’s daughter to be taken to Asokoro District Hospital where it was diagnosed that her intestine was perforated due to  a prolonged typhoid case. 
She said the girl had already undergone two surgeries waiting for a third surgery in a bid to save her life.
“I can’t say of other cases but for the one in the hospital that I know it was typhoid,” she said.
It was when she was in the community that she learnt about other children and contacted health authorities which in turn told AMAC chairman.
She said since Wednesday, AMAC had deployed health workers to the community.
Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), Abdullahi Adamu Candido, said the council would provide additional borehole and a public toilet for the residents.
Candido who was in the community on Monday, said officials of the council were not properly and timely informed about the situation but moved into action immediately they heard it.
While urging the residents to take sanitation serious, he said they should also be careful with the water they drink. 
“The issue is no longer about the number of people that we have lost so far, but what we would now do to prevent future occurrence of such epidemic. In fact, 90% of the intervention was done by AMAC. And I’m grateful to God that the number of affected persons is minimal,” he said.