Nyanya blast: Death toll hits 20

L-R: Acting Chief Medical Director, National Hospital, 
Dr. Jaf Momoh; Minister of State for Health, Dr. Khaliru Alhassan;
 Minister, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu; and a little girl,
 Elizabeth Anabuchi, during the visit of the minister
 to blast victims, at National Hospital, Abuja… on Saturday.

The death toll of the last Thursday’s bomb explosion in Nyanya has increased by one at Asokoro District Hospital. It is now officially 20.

This was confirmed during a tour of the hospitals by the Minister of State for Health, Dr. Khaliru Alhassan on Saturday in Abuja.

The hospitals include Asokoro, Maitama, Wuse, Nyanya general hospitals, National Hospital and a private facility, Pan-Raf Hospital in Nyanya.

According to him, the hospitals were not lacking in anything.

He said, “We have visited some facilities and you can see our health team attending to patients professionally and adequately. There is no single place that we went and found patients in need. They are all being adequately taken care of.

“People are dressed and drugs are being administered on them, so we have the capacity to deal with the unfortunate incident that happened. All the hospitals are responding to the situation properly.”

On whether he could quantify the amount of money that had been spent on the treatment of the patients, Alhassan said, “It is virtually impossible at the moment because it is an ongoing thing.

“You need to know that the first cases are still here, we cannot say now how much has been spent, but it is going to run into millions, unfortunately. The Federal Government  directed the Federal Capital Territory to take care of the responsibility of medical, feeding and other expenses incurred by these innocent victims.

“We’ve been receiving very good response from our development partners. The Red Cross has donated a lot of medical equipment to the National Hospital, which has been distributed and I am sure other donors have also donated to us.”