Ganduje Under Fire Over Resort To Verbal Autopsy

By Ayodele Oluwafemi

The resort to “verbal autopsy” by the authorities in Kano State in determining the cause or causes of death that recently ravaged Kano has been received with outrage by Nigerians on social media.

A member of the Kano State COVID-19 Technical Response Team, Dr. Tijani Hussain had said that the state is conducting the “verbal autopsies” to ascertain the causes of the unusual deaths.

Dr Hussain, had on Monday, in an interview on Nigeria Info FM, said that due to the religion and culture of the people of Kano State, scientific autopsy could not be carried as the people bury their corpses almost immediately after death.

He noted that the verbal autopsies involved asking relatives of the dead person, the symptoms and nature of illness before death.

“Kano, which is mainly a Muslim state, normal autopsies are not conducted, where causes of deaths are not established before people are buried and usually our people are buried within a few hours. That is even desirable as per the religion of the people.

“However, most of these deaths happened at home not in facilities, where they have not dead at the hand of members of medical practitioners. It is difficult to even establish the diagnosis let alone confirming the diagnosis.

“However, in medical practice, there is what we called verbal autopsy. Verbal autopsy means you asking relatives of signs/symptoms of several other diseases, so to see if you can pin the cause of deaths of that particular incident or disease. This is what we are doing right now.”

His comments sparked outrage on the microblogging platform, Twitter.

Controversy has trailed the cause of mysterious deaths in Kano State in recent days, however, the Governor Abdullahi Ganduje has refuted the claims that the deaths are COVID-19 related.

A section of Twitter users argued that scientific autopsy is the appropriate method to ascertain the causes of the mysterious deaths and verbal autopsy will not be appropriate in this period of pandemic, while noting that culture and tradition should not come the way of medical finding during this period of pandemic.

Another section of Twitter users lambasted the Kano State Government for being incompetence and insensitive in this critical period.

@_Adadioramma tweeted: “A verbal autopsy is basically postmortem history taking using informants, in this case, possibly illiterate family members. It has a high tendency of producing misleading results for victims of a disease with nonspecific or constitutional symptoms e.g COVID-19.”

@DrOlufunmilayo tweeted: “NO burial register.NO records of death rate.

NO routine autopsies for mystery deaths.

NO accurate database of dead people.

This is the sad state of Kano.That is why Kano people are dying and Ganduje is doing guesswork and verbal autopsy.This is how Kano failed Kano citizens.”

@Danny_Walterr tweeted: “Verbal Autopsy is what the Bureau de Change leader of Kano used in a Mass Death? Autopsy is not permitted in your culture but ignorance is? We’ll just keep calling it the #KanoVirus until y’all leave culture for few minutes and do what is right.”

@iflplease tweeted: “This issue isn’t about whether Nigerians have integrity or not. There are liars in every country in the world. The only reason why I don’t agree with the verbal autopsy thingy rn is because a pandemic is ongoing and we NEED to be sure of the cause of any death.”

@Oti_pr tweeted: “You have to first admit you have a problem before you can get a solution to it. Your tradition and culture does not permit autopsy even in a critical time where it’s necessary but it allows room for ignorance and illiteracy!

What the hell is verbal autopsy? This kano people sha.”

@ebelee_ tweeted: “How can we be doing “verbal autopsy” in the middle of a pandemic that spreads like wildfire ? If we don’t know the actual cause of death cause proper autopsies aren’t done, how do we even begin contact tracing if it’s Covid and isolate possibly infected people ? Kano abeg naw.”

@Ekwulu tweeted: “We are in the 21st Century and someone in Kano is talking about verbal autopsy.Even the ancient Egyptians during the time of Moses used a better method.What is wrong with the Kano state government? Who did we offend in this country?”

@minesam tweeted: “People are dying but you want to uphold your culture and tradition.?‍♂️

Autopsy is not permissible in the culture and tradition of Kano people. So they resort to Verbal Autopsy.

Illiteracy, ignorance and hypocrisy will not k!ll us in this country. OMG.”

@aniefioketimMyk tweeted: “Verbal Autopsy? You’ll think Nigeria has reached the lowest of low but every day they pull yet another unbelievable stunt. Verbal Autopsy cuz of “tradition and religion” ?Gracious Lord.”

@hellomike01 tweeted: “How can a whole state rely on doing Verbal Autopsy? Are you guys normal?”

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