Regrettably, the disease has since spread to affect residents in Abeokuta North and Abeokuta South council areas.
Dr. Tomi Coker, the Commissioner for Health, has confirmed the outbreak of cholera, revealing that there have been 236 reported cases and, heartbreakingly, 12 fatalities.
He said “high level of open defecation, poor waste management and poor water source. Unfortunately, we have a report of 246 cases and there have been at least about 12 deaths, which brings us to fatality rate of 44.6 percent.
“This is slightly high for a state like ours because we are educated. And from what we found out that’s actually promoting the cholera outbreak is the fact that there’s high level of open defecation in the state.
“It started in Ijebu North Local Government where we have 217 cases, but now we have more reports. We have some from Abeokuta North last week. We have two reports from Abeokuta South.
“It is unfortunate that our people still engage in open defecation, unaware that fecal materials enter shallow wells, which many of them use as water sources. For instance, in Ijebu-North Local Government, we found 52 shallow wells and microbiological testing revealed that 75 percent of these wells had evidence of fecal contamination with coliform bacteria.
“We will work with our colleagues in the Environment Ministry to ensure sanitation, promote the use of appropriate sanitary facilities in homes, and construct sanitary wells. These wells should be well-built and less likely to be contaminated by fecal material, especially during the period of incessant rainfall and flooding, which washes fecal material into our water sources”.
