20100606
africanews

Lead poisoning killed 163 people, including 111 children, in Zamfara State of Nigeria due to illegal gold mining in last months, a senior health official said. The poisonings were caused by the illegal extraction of ore by villagers.

They would extract the ore and haphazardly dispose of the soil containing lead deposits which children would play with. The more than 100 child victims got poisoned through inhalation or hand-to-mouth contamination.

Dr. Henry Akpan, Nigeria's chief epidemiologist, told The Associated Press that 100 of the dead were children from five villages in Zamfara state, a near-desert region of the Sahel that has seen a growing food crisis over recent weeks. Akpan said the children either played near the leaching process or took part in it, swallowing the lead by putting their hands in their mouths or breathing it in.

The State Commissioner for health told BBC Hausa Service reporter Haruna Shehu Tangaza that “federal and state authorities, as well as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were taking part in the quarantine and clean-up efforts in the state, about 300 others in the area have fallen ill from lead poisoning since the illegal mining began in January,” he said.

An official from Centre for Diseases Control and Prevention from Atlanta USA told BBC’S Hausa service they are doing their best to remove the contaminated soil from the affected villages.

Zamfara state where President Goodluck Jonathan last week inaugurated a mineral processing plant has huge deposits of solid minerals including gold and columbite.