Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje has disclosed that autopsies are still being carried out to unravel the cause of the deaths.

Ganduje on Monday disclosed this in a tweet on his official twitter handle.

Recall that the state had at the weekend alone lost about 14 prominent sons and daughters to sudden deaths creating palpable fears among residents within the state and outsiders.

According to the Governor, “Over the past week, there have been reports of mysterious deaths in our great Kano State and I’m here to assure everyone that investigations are already ongoing. Autopsies are still being carried out but so far there’s been nothing to suggest that they are linked with COVID-19.

"The State Ministry of Health has been sleepless in their battle against the pandemic and I will like to commend them for their efforts thus far. They have fought hard in the sporadic testing and quarantining of the infected person across the state,” Ganduje tweeted.

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.

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“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. 

He said that “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.