She appeared inconsolable. And you couldn’t blame her. She just lost a daughter in circumstances she believed were clearly avoidable. Mrs Itulua is the mother of the student of Queen’s College, Lagos, Bithia, the second girl to die after sicknesses and deaths linked to contaminated water and unhygienic environmental condition of the elitist school.
“Of the three daughters I sent to Queen’s College, only two came back home alive. Bithia died due to carelessness on the part of the school authorities”, the bareaved mother told Sunday Vanguard last week.
Bithia is the second student to die after Vivian Osuinyi, who also took ill in circumstances linked to contaminated water in the college.
Meanwhile, two other girls of the Queen’s College who are equally ill are said to be on admission at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) where they are being treated, with both, according to their parents, in critical condition.
Parents of the girls, identified as Joy (SSS1 student) and Muninat (JSS 3), spoke anonymously when Sunday Vanguard visited LUTH Child Emergency Unit where the students were being treated. Joy’s mother, describing her daughter’s situation as critical, said the girl kept saying incoherent things even after she had been rushed to LUTH penultimate Friday when her situation took a turn for the worse.
She had been stooling and vomiting.
The mother said: “She (Joy) was running temperature amid the stooling and vomiting, and saying words that were not discernible. That got me scared and I started calling on God for divine healing.”
Corroborating his wife’s claim, the father of Joy, who telephoned Sunday Vanguard after he learnt that we visited the girl in hospital, explained that her daughter remained on close observation by doctors, saying, however, that the girl was responding to treatment. His words: “Due to my position, I can’t say much. But it is a fact that my daughter is suffering from infection and diarrhoea.”
In the case of Muninat, JSS student also on admission at LUTH, her father was running here and there at the hospital to get results of the tests carried out on the girl. According to the father, the fate of his daughter remained in God’s hands as she could barely talk.
The father said: “May God bless the new Principal, Mrs Bola Are, who has been going from one hospital to the other to see the sick students. My daughter, as you can see, is in critical condition. Although I can’t tell you what is wrong with her now as we are still running tests to ascertain that, the symptous that made us to rush her to LUTH are stooling, vomiting, severe headache and high temperature.”
Another Queen’s College parent, who gave his name as Mr Ajumobi, told Sunday Vanguard that two of his daughters took ill after returning home for mid term break, saying the younger one, in JSS 3, was undergoing treatment at LUTH.
“Yes, my two daughters at Queen’s College took ill. The older one in SSS3 first started complaining of stomach pains soon after they returned home for the break and was treated.
What baffled me was that on Tuesday that week, her younger sibling started complaining of the same pain of lower abdomen. Hence we rushed her to LUTH. She is receiving treatment there now,” the father of two said.
How Bithia died – Mother
Narrating how Bithia Itulua died, the mother said she received a telephone call from Queen’s College authorities on February 14 during which she was told to come and take her daughter home as her situation had gone critical.
“My daughter was at the point of death when I eventually got to the school. She was saying incoherent words. We took her to hospital where diagnosis revealed that she had infections that affected her pelvic. My daughter died on February 22 and was buried the next day”, the mother said.
“Up till now, I am yet to come to terms with Bithia’s death. Of the three daughters I sent to Queen’s College, only two came back home alive. Bithia died due to carelessness on the part of the school authorities”.
Bithia’s siblings, Abigail, in SSS 3, and Blessing, in JSS 1, also lamented the death of their sister.
Said Abigail: “That Thursday, February 22 when we having our inter-house sports and an impromptu protest organised by SSS 3 students, I did not know that my sister had died. It was after we got home the following day and met the house unusually quiet that my mum told me and my younger sister that Bithia was no more.”
The girl went on: “I blame the school authorities for my sister’s death. She had been complaining of headache and high temperature while in school. All they did was to give her analgesic. It was after she refused to eat and her temperature became extra hot that my parents were called. If they had given her sick permit on time, maybe she would not have died.”
Blessing, Bithia’s immediate younger sister, said, “I really miss my late sister’s arguments. Despite her being a quiet person, she was sound and you could rarely win her in an argument. She had wanted to be a lawyer or an astronaut.”
Contamination water, not spaghetti killed Vivian and Bithia – Friend and class mateof the deceased, Daniella.
A JSS 3 student of Queen’s College and Bithia’s friend, Daniella (not real name), said that contrary to a report that the spaghetti meal the students ate led to the stooling and vomiting among the students, the real cause of Vivian and Bithia deaths was the contaminated water used in cooking food in the school.
Her words, "I don’t think spaghetti eaten that day was the cause of the stooling and vomiting among students. The real cause was that the water used in cooking our meals was contaminated .
The tank is rarely washed and the water always not treated. I was made to understood that Bithia did not drink the school’s water. That meant that she could have contacted the illness through the food she ate.
“Our feeding habit is very bad. The dining room is most of the time dirty and we are some times fed with unwashed plates and utensils”.
Vanguard
