Lagos | Saturday
A FRENCH medical team that visited the northern Nigerian city of Kano, where a cholera outbreak has already claimed over 250 lives, said the situation there was serious and the hospital “overflowing”.
Volunteer medical group Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) – Doctors Without Borders – sent a medical team to the cholera-ravaged city on Thursday to assess the situation.
“Our findings were shocking. The situation is a bit serious. The hospital is overflowing with patients. Most of them are lying on the floor, no beds,” MSF official Karen Kacan said by telephone from Abuja.
She said people continued to be brought to the state-run Infectious Diseases Hospital (IDH), which is already over-stretched.
“The medical director is overwhelmed. He is looking for where to transfer the patients,” she said.
Kacan said the Kano State government has not yet requested help from MSF.
“Our mandate does not allow us to intervene without being asked. We are ready to assist as soon as we are called upon to do so,” she said.
An AFP correspondent, who visited the hospital on Friday reported seeing “two bodies being carried out and four patients admitted in less than 30 minutes.”
Speaking to AFP during his visit to the hospital Friday, Kano State Health Commissioner Mansur Kabir said the government was doing everything in its power to control the outbreak.
Efforts are being made to provide drugs and purified water to all parts of the state to prevent the disease spreading, he added.
“We have also embarked on enlightenment campaigns to stress the need for good hygiene by the people,” he said.
Cholera, a waterborne viral disease, is characterised by diarrhoea, vomiting, muscle cramps and severe loss of body fluids. Last year, an outbreak of the disease in Kano and other towns killed scores of people before it was controlled. -AFP