Follow Us on Google
From Uchenna Inya, Abakaliki
A section of the Ebonyi State Ministry of Health has been gutted by fire with property worth hundreds of millions of naira destroyed.
The incident occurred at the weekend.
The inferno destroyed the cold store housing immunisation and solar units which contained vaccines, vaccine carriers, cold chain boxes, laptops, documents, five refrigerators, two solar refrigerators, 45 solar batteries, inverters, including hospitals beds and foams received from the National Primary Health Care Development Authority (NPHCDA), Abuja, for distribution to local government areas across the state, among others.
The State Commissioner for Health, Dr Moses Ekuma, lamented the disaster and thanked God that no life was lost. He thanked the Commissioner for Power and Energy, the fire service personnel, and the security men who alerted him on time for their prompt response, which made the fire not spread to other parts of the building.
He said, “Different vaccines like BCG, penta, HPV vaccine etc that were all stored in that cold room were burnt”.
Other News
Ekuma, who noted that the exact cause of the fire was not known, said that there was no public power supply for about five days ago, and the solar being the alternative power supply was not working, which prompted them to invite the EEDC officials to restore the light yesterday, while the solar engineer, who was said to have travelled, was yet to come before the inferno happened.
While he announced that a committee has been set up to investigate the cause of the fire disaster and to forestall future occurrence, he asked the director of administration to allocate new offices to the officers working in the Immunisation Unit.
He maintained that the fire outbreak has caused significant damage to their immunisation operations and that section of the building, pointing out that building professionals would give accurate reports on that.
Officer In Charge of Operations in Ebonyi State Fire Service, Frank Oka Ota, said he got a distress call at about 5:18am and mobilised his men to the place immediately, emphasising that they tried to cut it off, so that it didn’t escalate to other parts of the building as it had already gained ground before they came.
He eulogised the Ebonyi State Governor, Francis Nwifuru, for procuring two brand new trucks (appliances) for them, which helped to answer distress calls promptly, while he appealed to him to employ more hands, to enable them perform better.
