Tragedy:13 Students Collapse After Inhaling Poisonous Chemical In Lagos School (PHOTOS)

Students of the Ogba Junior Grammar School in Lagos have been hospitalized after inhaling a poisonous chemical in school on Thursday, March 6, 2014.

13 students collapsed on the spot after inhaling the gaseous emission from unknown chemical in the school premises.

According to reports, a similar incident took place a few months ago in the same school which the Lagos State Government is yet to unravel.

 

ThisDay reports:

 

A source gathered that the latest incident occurred around 1p.m., when students in one of the classes  started collapsing one after the other due to excess inhalation of the said chemical.

The affected students were identified as follows: Memuna Tijani, Subeadat Oladokun, Taiwo Adebiyi, Rodiat Muiz, Omolade Ogunbami, Blessing Onaigbe, Karimot Akiyode, Modupe Idowu and Rasak Gbolahan. The students as reported by one of our source  are currently undergoing treatment at the Surgical Emergency Ward, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) and  also responding to treatment.it was also revealed that only one of the victims was in a critical condition

It was gathered that the incident compelled the school authority to order other students to vacate the premises immediately and the school shut down.

According to the source, the gaseous substance emanated from the administrative block of the school sharing the same fence with the Ogba Shopping Mall,which housed several small scale companies, shops and a new generation bank.

Officials of the Lagos Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA), National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Lagos Ambulance Services (LASAMBUS), Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA), Lagos State Environmental Health Monitoring Unit (SEHMU) and the Nigeria Police were at the scene to rescue victims of the gaseous emission.

LASAMBUS officials quickly evacuated the fainted students and rushed them to LASUTH for treatment, while everyone was evacuated from the school.

Officials of LASEPA were seen at the school’s premises carrying out investigation to unravel the type of chemical contaminant emitted into the school environment.

 The Ogba Shopping Mall, housing several shops, companies and Ecobank Nigeria Plc was shut down by LASEMA officials while hundreds of people working in the shopping complex were evacuated from the complex.
A legal practitioner, Joshua John, whose chamber is in the mall, said he perceived the gaseous substance, which made his breathing irregular, saying that they were evacuated from the premises of the mall to avoid casualty, noting that nobody was affected at the mall.

LASEMA General Manager, Dr. Femi Oke-Osanyintolu,confirmed that the students “were responding to treatment very well, but however, we have condoned off the school and the building associated with that area. Why we are doing that is to allow us carry out risk assessment and analysis on the place. We are appealing to our people not to panic that the state is on top of the challenges.

“What we are doing is that we are carrying out an operation and after we might have carried out the operation, we will go into specific and compare issues with what happened the last time when the same thing occur in the same school.

“We try to localise it and we have brought the expert and they are working on it, we brought LASEPA that are experts on this and they are working… They are with us here and at the general hospital. People should remain calm,” the general manager explained.