The Head of the Adabraka Polyclinic, Dr Abdul Razak Quao, says the Accra High School students rushed to the facility due to food poisoning were in safe hands and urged the public to remain calm.
He said 22 out of the 27 students (14 males and 13 females) brought in had been stabilised and discharged, with the remaining five rushed in this dawn also in good condition.
They would be discharged during the day after their lab results were out, he said.
In an interview on Wednesday in Accra, Dr Quao said the first group of students, five in number, was rushed in by their Senior House Master at 0500 hours on Tuesday, with issues related to vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pains.
Between the hours of 0800 to 0900, seven more were rushed in with similar health conditions, thus increasing the number to 12.
He said at that point, the signs and symptoms raised suspicions that were in line with food poisoning, as such, they run some tests, which further confirmed their suspicions.
“We usually run further investigations to check and see if we could isolate particular organisms behind the condition. The issue came as a result of kenkey that was served at the School,” he stated.
In total, 22 cases were recorded as at Tuesday, however, only one of them, a male, was in a bad state of shock but they managed to stabilise and later discharged him.
Dr Quao said the Public Health team was sent to the school Tuesday to run investigations pertaining to the neatness of their kitchen and kitchen staff, food handling certificate (whether it was genuine or expired), their source of cooking and drinking water.
“Our investigations revealed that they had a good source of drinking water and that they strictly cooked with pipe borne water,” he said.
Dr Quao noted that the Public Health Team had been dispatched again to the School Wednesday to run further investigations on the students they had discharged and to collect samples from the kitchen to see if they would make out any organism that had contributed to the health condition.
He, therefore, called on the public to practice proper hand washing with soap under running water to prevent a lot of those diarrhoea related cases.
He said the public should also endeavour to eat only hot food in order not to pick up germs and viruses.
