Mystery KUMACA deaths: Noguchi report ready

Jasmine Arku Dec - 07 - 2017 , 11:10 2 minutes read

A report on the elusive cause of deaths at the Kumasi Academy is expected to be made public by the Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) by close of work, Thursday.

The report is based on blood sample analysis of three of the 11 victims and conducted by the Noguchi Memorial Research Institute.

Its release is expected to put to rest the cause of the mysterious deaths that have seen parents forcibly take their wards from the school.

The Ashanti Regional Director of the GHS, Dr Emmanuel Tenkorang made this known in a radio interview on Accra-based Citi FM.

“With the samples that were taken to Noguchi, we’ve had the results but they’ll have to work on it further. I’m sure that by the close of today, the Director General of Ghana Health Service will come out with a statement on the findings and the way forward. But so far we’ve been able to contain the situation,” he said.

According to him, the students on admission at the KNUST Hospital were most likely to be discharged today.

"38 of the children were on admission as at yesterday and it is likely that most of them will be discharged today. Yesterday I was with them and they were all doing well on treatment,” he said.

According to him, the antibiotic drugs being administered to the students have been effective in containing the situation.

“Initially we thought it was meningitis that is why we started on antibiotics. Fortunately, it has worked and we’ve had the results and based on the results we’ll come out with certain actions.”

Dr Tenkorang also noted that his outfit would conduct further investigations in collaboration with the Ghana Education Service to ascertain the cause of the disease and how determine how to prevent future occurrences.

“Even if this epidemic is over, we will need to reassess, do a whole lot of environmental scanning in the school…we will continue to do further investigations in collaboration with the Ghana education service to see how best we can address the challenges in the school which made it prone to this infection,” he said.