SUSPECTED FOOD POSIOING-11 HOSPITALIZE
By Mohamed Souire Bangura.
Eleven (11) people were affected by food poisoning/ contaminated food at Eastern Police Division. The incident occurred on Sunday 18th August, 2024; after a group of bobbies eat food prepared and served by cops who were on duty at the Eastern Police Division in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Amongst the victims, seven were police officers (including three females), one support staff and three female suspects.
The food was served on plethora of mini bowls and some big bowls including two big plates where all the victims eat from. Upon consuming the food, the victims started experiencing dizziness, vomiting, and bowel discomfort. Upon noticing the these conditions, Inspector Mohamed B Barrie, the Junior Police Officer, who happened to be the Commanding Officer at the police station on that day, asserted that he ordered the victims to be taken to the Sierra Leone Police hospital for immediate medical attention.
On a reactive move, the Public Health team of the Sierra Leone Police facility activated its response mode and conducted a case investigation by capturing vital data and triage and/or isolated the cases. On the following day, on further case investigation, Dr.Mohamed S Bangura, visited the scene on environmental health check and event-based surveillance (EBS) on the food stuff which might be contaminated at the process stage from production to consumption and to probe further for other possible risk factors related the suspected food contamination. Dr. Bangura sourced data that majority of the victims eat from the two plates which where consociated from drugs addicts and then later on used to save the food.
Speaking to this medium, Dr.Mohamed Ibrahim Jalloh (AIG), the Director of the Sierra Leone Police Medical Services, and his smart medical personnel (including the clinicians, the public health specialists and non-technical staff) swiftly responded to the victims who triaged and put them on medications and/or administered IV fluids to sedate them. He immediately alerted the Ministry of Health about the situation that dispatched the District Health Medical Team’s (DHMT) Rapid Response Team (RRT) to assess the situation.
Upon arrival of the RRT, which compose of the Laboratory technician, Risk/Health Communication specialist, Surveillance Officer, Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) specialist, the WASH, and the Port Health Officer; Juliana P.S Sellu, the RRT team lead, told this medium that her team collected sample from the leftover, the patients, did case investigation capturing their data and swapped the plate(s) for laboratory analysis.And affirmed that she will inform the public about the outcome of the laboratory analysis.
In addition, after coordinated effort from the medics of the Sierra Leone Police hospital, the patients responded to treatments and recovered and later discharged, whiles follow-up activities are going on to keep monitoring their health in their different communities.
It could be recalled that similar incident occurred within the same Eastern police community in the Eastern part of Freetown and Falaba in Kabala Northern part of Sierra Leone.
