The outbreak of cholera in Lagos state is not unconnected to the consumption of locally made tiger nut drink, authorities have said.
The state government said patients who were hospitalised in Eti-Osa LGA due to the disease took an unregistered tiger nut drink.
The epicenter of the current cholera outbreak is Eti-Osa in Lagos, the largest city and commercial hub of Nigeria. In a Saturday interview with Punch, Kemi Ogunyemi, the Lagos state governor’s special health advisor, disclosed this.
As of June 21, Lagos had recorded 24 deaths and 35 confirmed cholera cases.
During the interview, Kemi revealed that the government visited the neighborhood to do a firsthand evaluation after noticing an increase in suspected cholera cases in Eti-Osa LGA. According to Ogunyemi, a survey revealed that patients who visited hospitals all admitted to consuming a specific tiger nut beverage. According to her, officials were then sent to locate the beverage so that samples could be tested for cholera. She claims that they found that the drink was not registered with NAFDAC during the fact-finding trip. They also located an empty bottle of the drink with a number on it, but when they tried to phone it, the number was unreachable.
“We found empty bottles with a name on them, but we discovered that it wasn’t even registered with the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), the regulatory body that ensures the safety of consumables,” she said.
“There was a phone number and a name on the bottle, and we started tracing. We did contact tracing, similar to what we did with COVID-19.
“We combed the area to ask people where they got the drinks from. We couldn’t find any full bottles. We only found empty ones, which were of no use because we could not test them. The phone number on the bottle was not reachable.
“Cholera is also water-borne, so we took samples of the water to test it. The bottom line is that we took stool samples because different things cause diarrhoea.
“It could be anything else. We found out that it was confirmed cholera, specifically Vibrio cholera subtype 01, which is the most infectious and aggressive type.
“There are different types, but we identified this one. In Lagos Island, Eti-osa, and Kosofe, we recorded the highest number of cases that went to the hospital.
“I’m not talking about reported cases. These are the people who did the right thing by going to the hospital to complain of symptoms, and they were treated. That’s when we were alerted.”
Ogunyemi added that the government has ramped up sensitisation and awareness to ensure that the outbreak does not morph into an epidemic
