Nigeria may be battling the worst
outbreak of Lassa fever in history. The fever which has afflicted over 284 has
killed about 154 Nigerians from different parts of the country from August 2015
to date.
Fresh cases are recorded every day
in some states like Ondo and Bauchi, where the outbreak had earlier stopped,
signalling that the disease could spread further. What implications does this
development portend for Nigeria a year after the latest outbreak began? What
lessons do we learn? Could this outbreak become an epidemic?
No one can provide definite answers
to these questions presently. The new Director-General of the Nigeria Centres
for Disease Control, NCDC, Abuja, Dr. Chikwe Ikpeazu, had, recently, in an
interview, maintained that Lassa fever outbreak is yet to become an epidemic
but there are fears that the continued deaths of Nigerians as a result of the
fever may be pointing in a different direction.
Health watchers believe that unlike
the response to Ebola outbreak, government may have failed to do same to Lassa.
Rather, the outbreak has been greeted with the attitude of complacency. For
instance, the Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Adewole, while speaking to State
House Correspondents in Abuja said Nigeria cannot win the battle against Lassa
the same way it won the battle against Ebola because Lassa is endemic in
Nigeria.
The Minister also, at an Emergency
National Council on Health meeting, said the country should not be talking
about control, but rather should sign off the obituary of Lassa. He said: “I
call it an embarrassment because as a nation we cannot witness Lassa fever
every year; it is rather abnormal for a nation that has resources like we
should have to be witnessing such epidemic.”
Lassa-fever Lassa-fever He promised that with
the strengthening of the nation’s epidemiology surveillance and response, Lassa
would be put under locked and key. Before now, millions of Nigerians did not
imagine the seriousness of the threat of Lassa outbreak. Unfortunately, months
after the inauguration of the committee on the fever, the current outbreak has
taken a new dimension, as the country may have failed to interrupt the
transmission.
Currently, the likely risk for
medical personnel is the newest security threat confronting Nigeria. With the
deaths of many doctors in the country, the threat of possible epidemic of the
disease cannot be ruled out coupled with the resurgence of wild polio virus at
a time Nigeria is facing serious economic challenges.
Contrary to the assumption that
Lassa is a seasonal disease, the Chairman, Lassa Fever Control Committee, Prof
Oyewale Tomori, at a symposium in Lagos, disagreed that the outbreak was an
emergency, adding that poor disease surveillance system has caused the
escalation and persistent re-occurrence. According to him, no fewer than three
people are diagnosed of the disease daily in the latest out-break.
“We have little value for life,
until more than 100 people die, it is not an emergency. For many years, Lassa
has been with us but we don’t take it serious. In other parts of the world,
when a single person dies of a disease, it is a national emergency. For how
long are we going to continue to call tragedy an embarrassment? He explained
that the breakdown in disease surveillance did not make the country notice that
Lassa has consistently brought sorrow, pains and agony to several homes.
“If you are not hearing of new
cases, it is not that the disease is not occurring, but because our disease
surveillance is not up to par. We deceive ourselves that it’s a seasonal disease,
but the fact remains that it occurs throughout the year. At least, three people
are diagnosed of Lassa daily somewhere in the country,” Tomori said. “We
abandon disease surveillance and control activities; there was a time people
worked together, the laboratories at Ibadan, the Ministry of Health, NIMR,
joined forces to protect the country.
In the 60s to 80s at Ibadan, we
produced every reagent we needed in the country. We did not depend on
importation. But now we are lazy and everybody wants to make money from
importation.” Sadly, with the new trend of the infectious disease, only few
Nigeria laboratories can give accurate results.
To Tomori, Six to seven laboratories
in the country cannot give proper results due to lack of support. The only few
that function in the country have the support of partner agencies and backing
from abroad. The professor of virology also, in a report, described Lassa as an
annual recurrent budget of death for poor people of Nigeria, adding: “Because
we have lived in a state of denial of the disease, we handle it with
characteristic laxity, laissez-faire, negligence, sloppiness, slackness,
disregard, triviality and freewheeling abandon.
“Lassa lacks the zeal and
trepidation that Ebola outbreak inspired and Nigeria still wakes up every year
an outbreak is reported, “running like a decapitated chicken in any which
direction, and forgetting about the disease till another year another
outbreak.”
To another stakeholder, a renown
professor of pharmacognosy and President, Bioresources Development Group, Prof.
Maurice Iwu, Lassa was more than an embarrassment because the country has the
personnel required, knowledge of the fever and how to prevent it, but the
disease still claims lives. Iwu argued that unless the country adopts the approach
used during the Ebola outbreak, many more people would fall victim.
“As long as Lassa fever is anywhere
in the country, as long as we have restaurants that don’t keep good hygiene, as
long as we have houses that are co-infested with rat and horse, as long as we
have dirty environment, we are all vulnerable,” he said. “The only thing we can
do is keep track of the virus, and from time to time do research. Our
universities should make sure that 80 percent of their research is localized to
treat our own diseases, issues and viruses we live with.”
Source:Vanguard
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