How To Curb Lassa Fever, By Health Minister

THE Federal Ministry of Health has warned that 29 million Nigerians are at risk of contracting Lassa fever.

Minister of Health, Onyebuchi Chukwu, said this during the commemoration of World Lassa Fever day, Saturday, in Abuja.

He pointed out that despite the discovery of Lassa fever in Nigeria in 1969, the disease has posed serious threat to public health, “especially with the rapid expansion of its frontiers, from an initial very few states to 26 states and the FCT.”

Chukwu, who was represented by the Minister of State in the ministry, Dr. Alhassan, said: “It is estimated that at least 29 million Nigerians, representing about 17 per cent of the nation’s present population, are at risk of contracting the disease. We should note that Lassa fever is of both regional and international importance. Over the years, outbreaks of Lassa of varying magnitude and severity have occurred in Nigeria, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. During these outbreaks, the case fatality can be as high as 50-80 per cent in untreated cases.”

The Minister pointed out that the country is confronted with outbreak of Lassa fever yearly in several parts of the country, with increasing magnitude and intensity. He said that in 2012, the outbreak occurred in 26 states of the federation, with a total of 1944 cases, 207 deaths including deaths of doctors and nurses, and a resulting case fatality rate of 10.65 per cent.

The outbreak, he said, necessitated a national review, which among others recommended the setting up of a National Lassa Fever Day to encourage Nigerians to take measures to prevent the disease and eventually eradicate it.

Chukwu noted that the epicentres of the disease have always been Edo, Nasarawa, Plateau, Ebonyi, Oyo, Taraba, Ondo, Lagos, and Benue States, but recent outbreaks have indicated that the geographical spread is expanding and that more states are at risk of the outbreak.Risk for Lassa fever, according to the Minister, remains inability of the public to recognise the disease and its means of transmission to others.

Associated factors for the spread, he said, include:

• poor environmental sanitation, which allows the proliferation of rats;
• poor personal hygiene;
• overcrowded condition in slums and squatter settlements; and
• bush burning.

Others are drying of foodstuff in the open and on the roadside.

Meanwhile, the Minister explained that Ebola Virus Disease, which currently ravages three countries in the West African region and constitutes threat to the world, has higher fatality rate than Lassa fever.

Dengue, another hemorrhagic fever within the category of the two diseases, Chukwu said, has a less fatality rate than Lassa and Ebola. “All the diseases cause bleeding,” he said.

Source: Guardian