Katsina State Health Commissioner Musa Adamu Funtua said Wednesday that more than 80 percent of the students hospitalized after a bilharzia treatment exercise at Government Science Secondary School, Batagarawa, have been discharged and returned to school, and that a government committee is working to establish what triggered the reactions.
At least 64 students developed vomiting, abdominal discomfort and dizziness after receiving medication during the exercise, which Primary Health Care authorities ran with the Batagarawa Local Government Area. They were taken to Ahmadi Rimi hospital and Turai Yar’Adua Maternal and Child Hospital in Katsina. Dr. Auwal Sani, the medical director at Ahmadi Rimi, said some students arrived unconscious and recovered after prompt treatment. He said doses were set according to each student’s height.
Funtua visited Ahmadi Rimi on Wednesday morning and told Channels Television in an interview that eight students were still receiving care. Only one of them remained on intravenous treatment, he said, and doctors had diagnosed that student with malaria rather than a complication from the bilharzia drug. During the visit he met the school’s vice principal, medical staff and parents, and he said he saw several students walking back from morning prayers and eating breakfast.
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The commissioner offered a preliminary explanation: there may have been a gap between the students’ breakfast and the time they were given the medication. He described that as an early finding and not a conclusion. The state has not announced an official cause.
His account of the timeline is specific. The exercise ran without incident on its first day, Funtua said, and the reactions came during the second phase on Tuesday. Once the problem was reported, all affected students were moved to hospitals, a response he credited with stabilizing the situation quickly. He also attributed the outcome to what he called God’s mercy.
A second state official gave a different picture of recovery. Yusuf Sulaiman Jibia, the Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, said earlier that “the affected students have fully recovered” and that arrangements were being made for their return to school, with food provided to them before they left the hospital. Funtua’s Wednesday figures, which leave eight students under care, do not match that statement, and the government has not reconciled the two.
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Students gave their own account of the dosing. Two of them, Abubakar Muhammad and Hassan Muhammad, said the number of tablets varied from one to three depending on a student’s height. A parent, Ma’aruf Sani, who visited his children at the hospital, said they had recovered.
None of the government statements reviewed by The Eastern Updates names the drug that was given. Bilharzia, also called schistosomiasis, is a parasitic infection contracted through contact with freshwater carrying the larvae of blood flukes, and mass school treatment campaigns across Africa commonly rely on a single-dose tablet, praziquantel. Whether that is the product used in Batagarawa has not been stated by the state.
Similar episodes have followed treatment drives elsewhere on the continent. In March 2023, authorities in Sudan’s Blue Nile region suspended a bilharzia campaign after students arrived at Ed Damazin Teaching Hospital with vomiting and acute diarrhea; the regional health minister said the side effects pass quickly, while doctors said families should have been warned in advance. In a national drive in Zimbabwe meant to reach 4.3 million children, students reported fainting after taking the tablets on empty stomachs, and some parents refused the medication until they received more information.
Officials elsewhere have flagged dosing on an empty stomach as a risk in school campaigns. In Ghana, a neglected tropical disease ambassador touring a school drive for praziquantel and albendazole cautioned teachers and health coordinators against giving tablets to students who had not eaten, and against letting pupils share a single cup. The Katsina committee has not said whether the interval Funtua described between breakfast and dosing bears on the reactions, or which other factors it is examining.
Funtua, for his part, said no one would deliberately harm a child, citing a Hausa saying that “every child belongs to all of us.” He described the exercise as a routine preventive program and promised to act on the recommendations of the committee. The state says routine bilharzia prevention remains an important public health strategy and that lessons from the incident will shape future rounds.
The disease has been documented in Katsina for more than six decades. A peer-reviewed survey notes that its endemicity in the state was established as far back as 1963, when prevalence of 95 percent was recorded in Katsina and above 90 percent in Kankia local government areas.
