False Sars report in Nigeria

2003-05-03 14:05

Port Harcourt, Nigeria - Nigerian officials shut down a radio station overnight after it broadcast an allegedly false report about an outbreak of the killer virus Sars, station staff said on Saturday.

Fears are high that the epidemic, which has killed more than 470 people and infected 6 000 worldwide, might spread to the teeming cities of Africa's most populous country, although no cases have yet been detected.

On Friday the private radio station Rhythm 93.7 FM broadcast a report in the southern Nigerian city of Port Harcourt that Chinese workers at a local restaurant had become infected with the disease.

After a complaint from the state health commissioner, a team of police moved in to shut down the station and arrested two employees, one of the station's staff said on Saturday in front of the locked offices.

Rhythm 93.7 FM was allowed to resume broadcasting later on Saturday, station manager Ken Okoye said. "It's true that there was a misunderstanding, but we are back on air," he said.

Meanwhile a local state-owned station broadcast a statement from Health Commissioner Emi Membere-Otaji that the original report was false.

The Chinese workers have been in Nigeria for more than a year and could not have contracted Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome since the virus came to light in their homeland this year, the statement said.

Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo has ordered that health experts be sent to airports to screen passengers arriving in this nation of 120 million people which has a ramshackle health infrastruture.

- AFX