The Benue State Government has closed down Vaatia College in Makurdi a private school, following the episode of a rare disease that left nine students of the school with mellow paresis.
Joseph Ngbea, the Commissioner for Health and Human Services, who verified the occurrence in a statement, said some of the patients have been discharged while few others are still in the hospital
He said that after they got the report of the outbreak of the disease, they went to visit three of the children admitted in the Teaching Hospital and it was observed that they all had paresis – weakness of the limbs.
Ruling out the possibilities of the cause being Poliomyelitis as the country has been verified free of it, the cause of this paresis was discovered to be ‘Golembia Syndrome. A weakness that starts from the limbs upward.
However, the Commissioner said the disease could be as a result of bacterial, fungal, or viral infection.