A student of Bawku Secondary Technical Institute in the Upper East Region, has been confirmed dead by authorities of the Bawku Presbyterian Hospital after contracting meningitis.
The deceased, a 19-year old student, died on Wednesday morning when he was rushed to the hospital after showing symptoms of cerebrospinal meningitis.
[contextly_sidebar id=”9JgLHPr0zHwDpdAlIzEwuMRInippRKnj”]Meanwhile, six others students of the school are currently on admission.
Confirming the incident to Citi News’ Fred Awuni, the Medical Director of Bawku Presbyterian Hospital, Dr. Clement Oppong, said “We had a case from the Bawku Technical School involving a 19 year- old boy who came to our facility this morning, and our checks revealed that the person had meningitis. Since then, we have had about six students on admission now with suspected cases of meningitis.”
Confirmed: Damongo SHS student died from meningitis
This follows a similar incident at the Damongo Senior High School in the West Gonja District of the Northern Region, where a student died from what medical practitioners described as non-communicable meningitis.
The school’s head teacher, Kipo Harrison, confirmed this on Damongo-based Pad FM. According to him, it is a recurring phenomenon especially during the harmattan season.
He however dismissed attempts to link the other 12 students on admission at the Damongo district hospital to the same disease. Kipo Harrison said a medical team from the Tamale Teaching Hospital took the deceased’s blood sample for further laboratory test.
The said student died on Tuesday December 12, 2017.
Koforidua SECTECH death
Another school that has had to deal with a health situation in recent days is the Koforidua Technical School, where a second-year science student who passed away over the weekend, was confirmed to have died from Meningitis.
This latest health scare and reports come on the back of the death of four students of Kumasi Academy in the Ashanti Region.
The pandemic strain of influenza type A, H1N1 2009, also known as Swine Flu, was later detected in some samples from KUMACA.
Aside from the four deaths, several students have also been hospitalized.
Respiratory samples sent to the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research also indicated that, there was an outbreak of an acute respiratory infection which the Health Ministry has since attributed as the cause of some of the deaths.
The whole student population had to be administered with antibiotics as part of a prophylaxis after which the school was fumigated
However, no definite cause of the deaths has been declared.
Health officials in both the Ashanti Region and the Eastern Regions, have insisted that they have contained the situation, and have assured the public of their commitment to ensuring the safety of the students.
The Eastern Regional Director of Health Services, Dr. Charity Sarpong, told Citi News: “I must say that currently, everything is calm in the school because we have given them the necessary support, they know what to look out for, they also have our contact numbers so that when there is something we will be immediately contacted for the necessary support.”
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By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana