Alleged Food Poisoning: Doctors Calms Nerves

The Medical Director at the Effia-Nkwanta Regional Hospital, Dr Paul Ntodi, has asked parents of students of the Archbishop Porter Senior High School (APSHS), who were brought to the facility on suspicion of food poisoning, to calm their nerves. He was not too sure if the students were deliberately poisoned, though most of them were brought to the hospital with symptoms of diarrhea. Speaking in an interview with The Chronicle in Sekondi yesterday, Dr Ntodi said they had to administer intravenous infusions (drip) on the students, since all of them were brought with diarrhea and malaria among others, bemoaning that the media had blown the issue out of proportion. At the time of filing this report, Dr Ntodi said 20 students were still on admission at the hospital, with about one hundred treated and discharged. He said the hospital had taken blood samples from the students for examination, and would soon come out with a report of what exactly could have caused their ailment. In the early hours of yesterday, authorities of the hospital refused to allow anxious parents who trooped to the facility to take home their wards. The hospital authorities directed the parents to confer with the school authorities for identification before they were allowed to take their wards home. Dr Paul Ntodi told newsmen that the hospital could not have allowed the parents to take their wards home, since the students were admitted on the instructions of the school authorities. Parents of students who were still on admission at the hospital were seen hovering around in anxiety.