Infection Outbreak: Lagos Health Officials Visit Queen’s College

Following the infection outbreak at Lagos State Queen’s College, the State Ministry of Health has begun investigation into allegations of an air borne flu-like disease.

However, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education (FME), Mr. Sonny Echono, debunked the information that there was occurrence of food and water bacterial disease which claimed the lives of three pupils in 2017.

Echono and a team from the Lagos State Ministry of Health visited the school on Tuesday October 1st,2019 to investigate claims of an epidemic outbreak.

Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi Abayomi, said in a statement by Tunbosun Ogunbanwo, Director, Public Affairs, Lagos State Ministry of Health, that the state had assembled an investigative team.

The team, which comprises officials of State Epidemiology Team and the Primary Health Care Services and Environmental Health Department of Lagos Mainland Local Government, are to unravel the cause of the infection and the number of pupils affected.

Based on preliminary reports of the investigations conducted by the team, Abayomi said it had identified what appears to be a sporadic increase in upper respiratory tract infections characterised by cough, catarrh, fever and weakness across some schools.

The Commissioner noted that the incidences were not an outbreak of any sort but excess number of cases that needed to be investigated.

The team has since visited Queen’s College and investigations are ongoing. Findings according to the review of health records in the school sick bay revealed that 89 students presented to the clinic are infected with Influenza like illnesses.