Kano State government has finally responded to the people’s agitations
and concern over reported mass deaths of people in the state. Daily
Trust gathered that the state government has begun verbal autopsy to
ascertain the possible causes of the deaths and to enable the
authorities to take the necessary measure toward ending the problem.
The
government’s adoption of verbal autopsy was made known by the Deputy
Coordinator of Kano State COVID-19 Response Team, Dr Sabitu Shu’aibu. He
stated that the government had earlier put up a system to investigate
if there was a link between COVID-19 and the deaths, adding that the
system came up with the verbal autopsy method.
“Kano State
government has begun house-to-house engagement with families of those
that have died to carefully administer questions on the symptoms
exhibited by the victims before they died. This is what is termed
clinically as verbal autopsy and it will allow the health professionals
to predict the possible causes of the recorded deaths,” he said.
Similarly,
Dr Usman Bashir of Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH), stated that in
an environment where an autopsy is not conducted due to some issues and
when the dead had already been buried, verbal autopsy is the best way to
go. He noted that it is apparent that such deaths must be recorded
because all attention is presently focused on the epidemic while other
sicknesses are neglected, stressing that the adoption of verbal autopsy
would unravel the mystery of the mass deaths.
“The verbal
autopsies would surely unravel things that we are not even looking at
because we have overstretched our energy and resources on COVID-19.
