The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) monday said about 80 per cent of Lassa fever cases very often pass unnoticed and called for a more strategic means to contain the disease.
In a statement signed by the NMA President, Dr Lawrence Obembe, the association said no state should feel isolated from the pandemic.
According to Obembe, “Lassa fever, in the vast majority (some 80 per cent) of cases, passes on unnoticed – with mild fevers, body aches, tiredness, loss of appetite, etc, as for many locally common diseases; and so, remain unnoticed. However in severe cases, these will progress with sore throat, cough, vomiting, diarrhoea and unexplained bleeding from different body openings such as nose, anus, vagina and many others as a result of damage of many body organs caused by this virus. In these cases, mortality (death) rates from the disease may rise rapidly to high levels of up to 50 per cent or more.
“Late reporting or hiding cases of the disease at home and so multiplying the infection is usually the reason for these types of high mortality rates,” he said.


The NMA explained that “hospital or other man-to-man transmission of the infection follow contamination with food or body fluid transfers, providing the reasons why home members and health workers wherever Lassa fever subjects exist or are taken for came must all practice the highest levels of personal and/or professional hygiene.
“Outside of Bauchi, Kano, Nasarawa, Niger, Edo and the other states in which the current epidemic is noted, all should know that no state in Nigeria should relax that they are not involved or affected. Lassa fever is not exclusive to any state because of the random population-mixing pattern in the country.
“In fact, all the states have the potential to be at risk of being affected if we neglect to observe basic personal and communal hygienic practices at the individual, family and community levels.
“This is in addition, and without any prejudice whatsoever, to any other ones being made by the various governments, agencies and bodies in the country.


The association further urged the federal government to continue with preventive measures already in place, stating: “The remaining three reported laboratories in the country that is able to identify the Lassa fever VIRUS TO full operation and/or establish new ones to augment these. This is very important in the Calabar-Enugu-Makurdi-Yola-Maiduguri axis of the country to augment the presently functioning ones in Lagos, Ibadan, Irrua, Port Harcourt, Abuja and Kano,” Obembe said.
Meanwhile, one index case of the disease has been recorded in Ekiti State, as a patient on admission at the Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido Ekiti tested positive to the infection at the weekend.
The Commissioner for Health, Dr. Olurotimi Ojo, who broke the sad news in Ado Ekiti yesterday at the stakeholders’ meeting on Lassa fever, said the patient was being isolated at the hospital, while efforts were being made by experts to ensure that she survives.
Ojo added that he had confirmed from the Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Dr. Lawrence Ayodele, who confirmed that the patient was a student of the School of Nursing, a training arm of the Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido Ekiti.
The commissioner, who revealed that the disease has been endemic, particularly in Borno State since 1969, said the patient was said to have been treated for malaria and typhoid fever with high profile antibiotics, but did not respond to treatment.
He said the situation had given room for suspicion and further diagnostic steps, where the patient was said to have been tested positive to the disease.


“At the weekend, the state had confirmed a case of Lassa fever that is being managed at the Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido Ekiti. The patient is stable and had commenced treatment.
“Immediately the patient was diagnosed and confirmed, the management began the process of contact tracing. Once you have an index case, there is tendency of having a primary case and possible spread and this could be dangerous.
“Though the doctors are handling the situation and monitoring the situation very closely. So, nobody has been quarantined after the contact tracing,” he said.


Ojo added that the state governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, had already prepared an isolated ward within the premises of Oba Adejugbe General Hospital, Ado Ekiti, even before the breakout of the disease in the state.
“However, the situation is being curtailed from efforts from the state government in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health and World Health Organisation (WHO), through the office of the national centre for disease control.
“The governor is also embarking on public and town-to-town sensitisation about Lassa fever through the airing of jingles on the state broadcasting corporation and distribution of IEC materials to the people.”


He advised the people of the state to take precautionary measures and refrain from taking risk that can lead to the contact or spread of the disease.
By: Paul Obi in Abuja and Olakiitan Victor
Source : http://freehealthcaremag.com/nma-80-of-lassa-fever-cases-pass-unnoticed/

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