Posted on: Fri 20-10-2023

Ogun State has in the last month recorded 236 cases of Cholera and 12 deaths from the disease, the state government confirmed on Thursday.

The state government had on September 17 alerted residents to the outbreak of Cholera in the Ijebu North Local Government Area, saying three deaths had been recorded.

The disease later spread to Abeokuta North and Abeokuta South LGs in the state capital.

The Commissioner for Health, Dr Tomi Coker, while giving an update on Thursday in Abeokuta, confirmed 12 fatalities out of about 236 cases recorded so far.

Coker linked the disease to “high level of open defaecation, poor waste management and poor water source.”

She said, “Unfortunately, we have a report of 236 cases and there has been at least about 12 deaths, which brings us to a fatality rate of 44.6 per cent.

“This is slightly high for a state like ours because we are educated. And from what we found out that’s actually promoting the cholera outbreak is the fact that there’s a high level of open defecation in Ogun State.

“It started in Ijebu North Local Government where we have 217 cases, but now we have more reports. We had some from Abeokuta North last week. We have two reports from Abeokuta South.”

To curtail the outbreak, Coker said the government had started chlorinating wells in Ijebu North, the LG worst hit by the disease.

She said the Ministry of Health was also collaborating with the Ministry of Environment and other relevant ministries, departments, and agencies to contain the spread of the disease.

“It is unfortunate that our people still engage in open defaecation, unaware that fecal materials enter shallow wells, which many of them use as water sources. For instance, in Ijebu-North Local Government, we found 52 shallow wells and microbiological testing revealed that 75 per cent of these wells had evidence of fecal contamination with coliform bacteria,” she said.

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