Water borne disease kill 14 in A/Ibom community


No fewer than 14 persons have reportedly died of water borne diseases in Okoroutip community in Ibeno local government area of Akwa Ibom state.

The water diseases were said to have broken out  in the village in December last year.

Blueprint investigation revealed that apart from persistent flood threatening the community, there is no source of drinking water in the area.

Speaking to our correspondent, weekend, the youth president of the oil rich community, Mr Henry Ekpe Nkanin, said the people depended on ponds and creek water for their daily source of drinking water.

“As a riverine area where there is no bush to dispose waste, the community disposes faeces and other organic substances in the water and still drink from it,” he said.

He said the unhygienic disposal of waste and lack of potable drinking water had thrown the entire community into an epidemic that has so far  claimed 14 lives since December last year.

“From December last year, we have buried 14 persons that died from water borne sicknesses and more would be buried as nothing is done to help us,” he  lamented.

Nkanin said the only borehole drilled by ExxonMobil many years ago had collapsed and the well contaminated while the entire plumbing system had also decayed, leaving the local people to help themselves with any available water despite the unsanitary conditions.

He complained that the only health centre in the area constructed by the former council chairman, Mrs Regina Egbe, was not equipped and there was no personnel to attend to patients.

“Some health workers only come here to give immunization vaccines to our children and left but nobody to attend to patients during emergencies,” he said.

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