Alleged Food Poisoning: Sokoto govt probes death of seven members of family

The government of Sokoto State, North-west Nigeria, has said it has ordered investigations into the death of seven members of a family in a rural community in the state.

The state’s Ministry of Health said the deceased had reportedly died after eating meals made from cassava.

The government said samples of the meal, cooking utensils and ingredients have been collected and sent to the state’s office of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) for onward transfer of the items to the regulatory agency’s laboratory in Kaduna state for testing.

The state’s Epidemiologist, Nuhu Dogodaji, disclosed this to PREMIUM TIMES over the telephone on Monday.

Mr Dogodaji said the ministry also took blood samples of members of the household who ate the meal but did not experience food poisoning and will be transferring them to the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).

“We have collected all the samples we need to run a test. We took blood samples from family members who were alive. Took a piece of the soup, which was already dry by the time we did. We took the pot and the spoon. We also went to a farm where they plucked the leaves and took some for the test,” he said.

Backstory

PREMIUM TIMES learnt that the family suffered food poisoning after eating Dambu and Lalo, a local cuisine made from cassava and vegetables, for dinner.

Confirming the incident, the ministry’s information officer, Nura Bello, said the cassava from which the meal was made was purchased in bulk and shared between four households who consumed it but did not suffer a similar fate.

He said following the incident; the ministry visited the village to assess the cause of the incident for onward communication to the state government for necessary action.

The Commissioner for Health, Asabe Balarabe, had asked for samples from one teenager who happened to be alive after eating the suspected meal.

Speaking on this, Mr Dogodaji told PREMIUM TIMES that the family began falling sick a few hours after eating, and before dawn the next day, the mother, Aishatu Abubakar, and one child had died.

He narrated that the children who survived the night were rushed to a nearby Primary Health Care centre, while the father was taken to the Sokoto Teaching Hospital. However, they did not respond to medical treatment and died in the hospital bed.

“Out of a family of 12, only five are alive currently. The father, mother and five children died as a result of the poisoning. They started feeling the discomfort at about 7 pm, and the first child died three hours later.

“The mother died at 5 am the next morning, and the rest of them died at health facilities because they were not responding to treatment,” he added.

Mr Dogodaji also said preliminary findings showed that the contamination was from the ingredients used to prepare the vegetable Lalo soup rather than the previously posited cassava.

He said three other members of the household who consumed the same cassava but with different soups were not affected by the poisoning.