Lassa fever killed 118 people in Nigeria in the first three months of this year, the West African country’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) said.
The virus, which is carried by rodents and was first recognised in 1969 in the northeastern state of Borno, has killed thousands of people over the years, especially in rural areas due to unsanitary handling of food.
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Despite years of campaigning on how to prevent the disease, there have been no significant improvements in environmental hygiene of impoverished rural Nigerians that could prevent rats from accessing homes, food and utensils.
He said treatment centres were suffering staffing shortages while many patients were delaying seeking medical care in favour of self-medication and other unorthodox practices that were mostly ineffective.
