KUMACA: Parents return wards for antibiotics after panic withdrawal

Panic-stricken parents who forcefully took their children home have started returning their wards to school to be covered in an antibiotics being administered at the Kumasi Academy Senior High School.

Municipal Health officials have begun administering antibiotics to students of the school following the outbreak of a mysterious disease which has so far claimed 8 lives.

More than 1,500 students have reportedly received the medication being administered by health officials Wednesday.

The Health Minister, kwaku Agyeman-Manu briefing parliament on the situation on Wednesday, 6 December 2017, said it was imperative to contain the students for now and enable them administer vaccines to them, insisting the withdrawal of students by parents is quite risky.

“Unfortunately last night, Mr Speaker, parents have taken their wards from the school and this has become another health challenge because the medical advice said that we should contain them in the school and manage them more efficiently. So, the problem we now have is that if the disease turns out to be contagious, then, it will mean those who have come out of the school into their family homes are also going to help spread the disease so that is the challenge we are confronted with.”

In total, the number of deaths recorded in the school this year (2017) has hit 11, as seven students died around April.

Test results from the Noguchi Memorial Centre for Medical Research have ruled out meningitis as the cause of multiple death in the school.

Students have begun receiving Azithromycin antibiotics against possible bacterial infection after a stakeholders meeting was convened on Tuesday to find ways of ending the “mysterious deaths”.

Meanwhile, reports from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Hospital where over 44 students from the Kumasi Academy School were on admission, indicates that 27 of the students have been discharged.