Accra High Students in safe hands - Dr Quao

Dr Abdul Razak Quao, the Head of Facility of the Adabraka Polyclinic, Wednesday said the Accra High School Students receiving treatment for food poisoning were in safe hands and urged the public to remain calm.

Out of the 27 students (14 males and 13 females) 22 had been stabilised, and, consequently, discharged.

“Only one of them, a male, was in a bad state of shock but they managed to stabilise him and he was discharged later,” Dr Quao said.

The other five, who were rushed there at dawn on Wednesday, were also doing well and would be discharged during the day after their lab results had been analysed.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, in Accra, following media reports, which indicated that some parents were alarmed by the situation,

Dr Quao said the first group of students, five in total, were rushed in by their Senior House Master at 0500 hours, on Tuesday, with symptoms related to vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pains.

Between the hours of 0800 and 0900, seven more were rushed in with similar symptoms, thus increasing the tally to 12.

He said at that point, the signs and symptoms indicated possible food poisoning, which was later confirmed by the laboratory analysis that they run.

“We usually do further investigations to check and if we can isolate particular organisms behind the condition,” he stated.

“The issue resulted from the kenkey that was served at the school”.

The Public Health team was sent to the school yesterday to run investigations pertaining to the neatness of their kitchen and the kitchen staff, food handling certificates (whether it was genuine or expired), their source of cooking and drinking water.

“Our investigations revealed that they had a good source of drinking water and that they strictly cooked with pipe-borne water,” he said.

He noted that the Public Health team had been deployed again to the school today to run further investigations on the students they had discharged earlier and to collect samples from the kitchen to see if they would make out any organism that had contributed to the condition.

He, therefore, called on the public to practice proper hand washing with soap under running water to prevent a lot of these diarrhoea-related cases.

He said the public should also endeavour to eat only hot food so that they would not end up picking up various viruses.