Oyo state government on Saturday called on residents in the state to be safety conscious and always drink water only from clean sources as a way to be more vigilant over suspected cholera outbreak in the state.
The state Commissioner for Health, Dr. Oluwaserimi Ajetunmob,i made the call during her visit to a private hospital in Ibadan where two persons with suspected cholera cases were receiving treatment.
Dr Ajetunmobi tasked residents in the state to practice good personal hand hygiene by frequently washing hands with soap and water, saying, “Cholera is a bacterial infection spread by eating or drinking food or water contaminated by the faeces (poop) of an infected person”.
The Commissioner maintained that cholera is highly infectious and can cause severe acute watery diarrhoea with severe dehydration, and that It may be associated with nausea, profuse vomiting, and fever.
According to the Commissioner, the two suspected cases in Ibadan had been tracked down to a private facility in the state as male workers at a construction site in Lekki Peninsula from Lagos state
Emphasising that there is no cause for alarm as the state Ministry of Health and other partners are on top of the situation by making efforts at ensuring that the state does not record casualties from the cholera outbreak from Lagos state.
She stressed that the response efforts included the deployment of LGA DSNO, promotional jingles in English and Yoruba running in different media houses, immediate inauguration of the Cholera technical working group, putting IDC Olodo into active mode for isolation and management, reaching out to all our surveillance rangers at the LGA level to intensify surveillance activities, re-posting of cholera case definition on the platform of community informants for updates, awareness, and sensitisation of the gatekeepers and other well-established community structures.
The Commissioner advised that anyone with the symptoms should not partake in self-medication but present him or herself at the nearest healthcare facility immediately.
