The Ondo State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Kayode Akinmade, has said the deaths recorded in Ode Irele, a community in Ondo State, from a strange ailment are directly connected to an exhumed corpse in the community.
Akinmade, however, said the number of dead remains 14 and not as high as between 28 and 34 reported by the media.
Confirming this to news men, Akinmade said the illness was not the same as the Ebola Virus Disease, although it had managed to kill its victims in less than 24 hours.
He said: “The symptoms were not that of Ebola; it’s a 24-hour attack that would make the victim to have headache, be unconscious, then after 24 hours, the person is gone.
“That one cannot be Ebola.
“All the necessary facility that government should provide, government has done that.
“We have moved all the ambulances and everything.”
Akinmade said although there were claims that as many as 34 people had died, only 14 people had fallen victim of the strange disease.
He said: “Available data do not indicate that 34 people have died – only 14.
“And from what we got, the 14 had personal contacts with those people who came to exhume the corpse that led to this epidemic.”