Makurdi nursing student suffers severe burns in gas cooker explosion

A 100 level student of  Benue State School of Nursing and Midwifery,  Makurdi, was burnt in an explosion from a gas cooker.

The student, Miss Stella Mekiah, who among others resumed barely a month ago, was said to be preparing her lunch when the gas cylinder exploded and burnt her and affected items in the hostel.

The principal of the school Mrs. Victoria Gusa, who narrated the incident to newsmen, said Stella had returned from church on Sunday and was preparing her lunch inside her hostel when the gas cooker exploded and burnt her severely.

The explosion was said to have burnt the student from hair down to her abdomen.

”As I speak now, Stella cannot  turn her body.  She is at the intensive unit of the Federal Medical Centre, Apir. She lost a lot of fluid even though she talks but it is incoherent,” the principal said.

The principal who pleaded with the state government to assist in the treatment of the burnt student, said  that the mother of the student could not raise the sum of N40,000 requested by the hospital as deposit before Stella can be treated, lamenting that the school authority could not also afford the money.

”Stella has been in Accident and Emergency ward instead of Intensive Care Unit due to our inability to deposit N40,000. The situation is pathetic, we don’t have money and the mother of the victim do not also have,” Mrs Gusa lamented.

The State deputy governor, Engineer  Benson Abounu, who visited the school on Tuesday, decried a situation where students cook inside the hostel, saying “this is highly unacceptable and against global practice.”

Abounu also frowned at the  absence of a central dinning hall at the institution and instructed the Commissioner of Health Mrs. Cecilia Ojabo to step in and address this anomaly.