ABUJA – Health officials in Nigeria have confirmed the death of 42 persons from the latest Lassa fever outbreak.
The Nigeria Center for Disease Control had declared on 21st of last month an outbreak of the disease, which kills hundreds in Nigeria every year.
In a situational report, the Nigeria Center for Disease Control stated that a total of 538 suspected cases were reported from 16 of the country’s 36 states, 213 of which were confirmed positive.
Since the start of the 2019 outbreak, there have been 42 deaths in confirmed cases. The case fatality rate in confirmed cases is 19.7 per cent.
The states which have recorded at least one of the confirmed cases are Edo, Ondo, Bauchi, Nasarawa, Ebonyi, Plateau, Taraba, FCT, Adamawa, Gombe, Kaduna, Kwara, Benue, Rivers Kogi and Enugu.
Lassa fever, named after the Nigerian village where it was first discovered, is transmitted from the excreta or urine of Mastomys rats, commonly known as “multimammate rats”.
Symptoms of the disease include fever, headache, dizziness, sore throat, malaise, cough, nausea, vomiting, chest pain and hearing loss.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said that it was deploying experts to help curtail the outbreak.
An outbreak of Lassa fever occurred in Nigeria during 2018 and spread to 18 of the country’s states; it was the largest outbreak of Lassa recorded.
