By CHARLES IWUOHA

Property worth hundreds of millions of Naira has been destroyed by fire in Ebonyi State Ministry of Health 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 to MAMII LGAs next week among others were all burnt by fire.

The health boss 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 officers and the security men who alerted him on time for their prompt response which made the fire not to spread to other parts of the building.

According to him, "different vaccines like BCG, Penta, HPV vaccine, etc, that were all stored in that cold room were burnt".

Dr. 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 ago 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 the solar engineer who was said to have travelled was yet to come before the inferno happened.

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.

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 as it had already gained ground before they came.

He eulogized the Governor Francis Ogbonna Nwifuru for procuring brand new two trucks (appliances) for them which helped to answer distress calls promptly and appealed to him to employ more hands to enable them perform better.