Sunday, March 29, 2026 - All kinds of medical equipment worth hundreds of millions of Naira have been destroyed by fire in Ebonyi State Ministry of Health.
The incident occurred in the early hours of Saturday
morning.
Speaking during the incident at Block 5 Centenary City
Abakaliki, the Hon. Commissioner for Health, Dr Moses Ekuma lamented that the
cold store housing immunization and solar units, which contained vaccines,
vaccine carriers, cold chain boxes, laptops, documents, 5 refrigerators, 2
solar refrigerators, 45 solar batteries, inverters, including hospitals beds
and foams received from National Primary Health Care Development Authority
(NPHCDA), Abuja for distribution, among others, were all burnt.
The Commissioner, who was deeply saddened over the fire
incident, appreciated God that no life was lost and thanked the Commissioner
for Power and Energy, the fire
According to him, “different vaccines like BCG, Penta, HPV
vaccine, etc, that were all stored in that cold room were burnt”.
Ekuma, who noted that the exact cause of the fire was not
known, said that there was no public power supply for about 5 days and the
solar being the alternative power supply was not working which prompted them to
invite the EEDC officials to restore the light yesterday.
While he announced that a committee has been set up to
investigate the cause of the fire disaster and to forestall future occurrence,
he directed the Director of Administration to allocate new offices to the
officers working in the Immunization Unit.
He maintained that the fire outbreak had caused significant
damage to their immunization operations.
On his part, the Officer In Charge of Operations in Ebonyi
State Fire Service, Mr. Frank Oka Ota said that he got a distress call at about
5:18 am and mobilized his men to the place immediately, emphasizing that they
tried to cut it off so that it doesn’t escalate to other parts of the building.
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