Africa’s most populous country continues to suffer from the brunt of underdevelopment and inadequacy in proper healthcare delivery. The epidemics that have bedeviled the people over the years can all be attributed to lack of hygiene, ignorance and abject poverty.
Last week, the Health Ministry in Abuja confirmed that twenty-one people have died from Lassa fever in the month of January. The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control said “Since the beginning of 2018, 80 cases have been classified as: 77 confirmed cases, three probable cases with 21 deaths,” the NCDC said on Twitter.
It also said that similar cases had been reported in 13 of 36 states while 10 health care workers had been affected.
Lassa fever belongs to the same family as Marburg and Ebola, two deadly viruses that lead to infections with fever, vomiting and in worst-case scenarios, hemorrhagic bleeding. Its name comes from the town of Lassa in northern Nigeria where it was first identified in 1969.
More than one hundred people were killed in 2016 in one of the nation’s worst outbreaks of the disease, affecting 14 of the 36 states, including Lagos and the federal capital, Abuja.
The virus is spread through contact with food or household items contaminated with rats’ urine or feces or after coming into direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person. The disease can be prevented through enhanced personal hygiene, avoidance of all contact with rats and keeping houses and surroundings clean.
