A third-year student of the Zuarungu Senior High School in the Bolgatanga Municipality of the Upper East Region has been confirmed dead from Cerebrospinal Meningitis (CSM), bringing the total number of student deaths from the disease in that region alone to three.
The deceased, Rakia Briamah, passed away on Sunday at the Bolgatanga Regional Hospital. Some three other students of the school are also on admission from a suspected case of Cerebrospinal meningitis.
Speaking to Citi News, the Medical Director of the Bolgatanga Regional Hospital, Dr. Patrick Atobrah, confirmed the cause of death as CSM.
“She [the deceased] was presented with lots of unconsciousness and fainting. She was kept on treatment, it was so severe that she couldn’t make it, we did the necessary investigation and that’s how we came to the conclusion of CSM” he said.
He noted that the region is going to make a definite decision on how to manage contact so that the anyone infected doesn’t spread the disease.
“The region is going to make a definite decision on how to manage contact. Already, three boys are at the hospital with suspected cases. We are about to do the necessary investigation to know whether it is the same. The region is in the process of taking the decision to manage close contact so that others will also not get the illness,” he said.
Recorded cases of meningitis in some Senior High Schools especially in northern Ghana, has become a major concern for stakeholders in the health and education sectors.
Apart from the deaths, several others have been hospitalized in all the affected regions.
Damongo SHS student died from meningitis
There have been similar cases at the Damongo Senior High School in the West Gonja District of the Northern Region, where a student died from what medical practitioners described as non-communicable meningitis.
The school’s headteacher, Kipo Harrison, who confirmed this, said it is a recurring phenomenon especially during the harmattan season.
He, however, dismissed attempts to link other 12 students on admission at the Damongo district hospital to the same disease. Kipo Harrison said a medical team from the Tamale Teaching Hospital took the deceased’s blood sample for further laboratory test.
The said student died on Tuesday December 12, 2017.
Koforidua SECTECH death
Another school that has had to deal with a health situation in recent days is the Koforidua Technical School, where a second-year science student who passed away, was confirmed to have died from Meningitis.
This latest health scare and reports come on the back of the death of four students of Kumasi Academy in the Ashanti Region.
The pandemic strain of influenza type A, H1N1 2009, also known as Swine Flu, was later detected in some examples from KUMACA.
Aside from the four deaths, several students have also been hospitalized.
Respiratory samples sent to the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research also indicated that, there was an outbreak of an acute respiratory infection which the Health Ministry has since attributed as the cause of some of the deaths.
The whole student population had to be administered with antibiotics as part of a prophylaxis after which the school was fumigated
However, no definite cause of the deaths has been declared.
Source: Citifmonline.com
