It was on Tuesday that a dear friend of mine, a public health optometrist at the Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, drew my attention to the resurgence of Lassa fever in Ebonyi State.
“We need to start a massive online campaign to draw the attention of government and our relevant health authorities to do more to tackle this Lassa fever outbreak head on. Yesterday it was Ondo and Bauchi, today it is Ebonyi, tomorrow can be your home state or village,” he wrote in a WhatsApp message.
“We lost two doctors and a nurse to Lassa fever. A patient came with the infection. The patient gone too. A social worker also died today to the highly contagious viral disease. Many at risk.
Please go on social media and let’s start a hashtag #EndTheLassaFeverScourge. Let your friends update their Facebook posts with the hashtag #EndTheLassaFeverScourge. Let the world hear,” he said.
The report is that the Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki on Sunday lost two doctors – Abel and Felix – to Lassa fever. At that point, two nurses and a house officer were in critical condition and the two nurses were taken to the virology centre in Irrua, Edo State, because the one in Abakaliki was not functional.
On Tuesday, members of the state chapter of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) protested along the major streets of Abakaliki over the non-functionality of the virology centre in the state which, according to them, led to the death of their colleagues. The state NMA in a communiqué urged the Federal Government to promptly equip and activate to an optimal functioning capacity the virology centre to serve Lassa fever patients in the state. It was in fact to curb this health hazard, which has become recurrent in the state, that the Governor David Umahi government built and equipped the N350 million virology centre and handed it over to the Federal Government through the Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki in 2016.
“Since the facility was built by the Ebonyi State government and designated a virology centre, despite no functionality, there has been increased referral cases from neighbouring states like Cross River, Benue, Enugu, Imo, Abia, hence increasing the risk of the staff of FETHA and surrounding communities as diagnosis can still not be made in the said virology centre,” the communiqué said.
“The Federal Government should live up to its promises through the Hon. Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Adewole, on the 5th of September 2016, to make the virology centre in Abakaliki a National Referral Centre by making it functional,” it further said.
As at Thursday, four people had died from Lassa fever in Ebonyi State, with a total of nine confirmed cases. There were three cases at critical stage of treatment, out of which two were a mother and child, while over 139 persons had been placed under surveillance, according to Daniel Umezurike, the state Commissioner for Health, who also said the fever had spread to some other states of the federation, including Edo and Nassarawa.
John Eke, the state Commissioner for Education, also announced in a statement that all educational institutions in the state would be shut down till Friday, January 26, 2018 in order to properly arrest the spread of Lassa fever in the state. The wife of the governor, Rachel Umahi, had to cancel her state function scheduled to take place in Afikpo South Local Government Area of the state for fear of the dreaded disease, according to reports.
It is indeed sad that lives have yet again been lost to Lassa fever in Nigeria. It is sadder that every bit of the story above is all too familiar. Lassa fever outbreak has now become an almost yearly ritual, and when it does come, the government and the health ministry follows the same pattern and goes through the same motions: set up committees, issue communiqués and warnings, pledge to do this and that. And once that bout is over, everyone goes to sleep – until the next round of outbreak and the helter-skelter movement begins all over.
By this time in 2016, the country was also running helter-skelter to curtail the spread of the virus, which resurged in the country in November 2015 with a reported case in Bauchi, followed by cases reported in Kano and Niger States. The efforts included raising a four-man expert committee to embark on a fact-finding mission to Kano, Niger and Bauchi, the three most endemic states, with a view to assessing the situation, documenting response experiences, identifying gaps and proffering recommendations on how to prevent future occurrences; immediate release of adequate quantities of ribavirin, the specific antiviral drug for Lassa fever, to all the affected states for prompt and adequate treatment of cases; deployment of rapid response teams from the Ministry of Health to all the affected states to assist in investigating and verifying the cases as well as tracing of contacts; intense awareness creation on the signs and symptoms as well as preventive measure; and a planned establishment of an inter-ministerial committee to deliver a final blow on Lassa fever and other related diseases in the long term.
On their part, individual Nigerians, among several other measures, declared a total war on rats, leading to a spike in the prices of rat poisons in the market. A type of rat, multimammate mice (Mastomys natalensis), easily the most common type of rat in West, Central, and East Africa and ubiquitous in human households, is the reservoir, or host, of Lassa virus which causes Lassa hemorrhagic fever (LHF).
In Lagos, the Environmental Health Officers Association of Nigeria (EHOAN) announced that it had destroyed no fewer than 4,400 rats in six major markets in the state under its de-rat market programme as part of efforts to curb the spread of Lassa fever in the state.
Despite these efforts, however, the disease had by the end of January 2016 spread to 20 states, including Abuja and Lagos, and had claimed at least 76 lives, with over 200 cases under quarantine and observation.
Just last Tuesday in Ebonyi, the protesting members of the state NMA said over 40 health workers in the state had lost their lives to Lassa fever between 2005 and 2018, in addition to uncountable others residents.
What is most saddening in all of this is how an ailment which was first discovered in the country in 1969 following the death of two missionary nurses, and which has resurfaced virtually every year since then, could still resurge and kill people with such an amazing speed despite advancement in medicine. It all goes to demonstrate how negligent the government has been.
In the current outbreak in Ebonyi, it could be deduced from what the medical doctors in the state are saying that the deaths could have been avoided if only the virology centre at the Federal Teaching Hospital were functional. And whose responsibility is it to make the virology centre functional?
This is not the time to play the blame game, but governments at all levels must be told point-blank that it is time to up their game in the area of disease prevention and control. While the governments do their part, individuals must continue to observe good personal hygiene, including hand washing with soap and running water regularly; dispose their waste properly and clean the environment so that rats are not attracted; improve on their food hygiene and food protection practices; avoid contact with rodents as well as food contaminated with rat’s secretions and excretions; avoid drying food in the open and along roadsides; cover all foods to prevent rodent contamination, among other preventive measures.
As Philip Anukwam, director, De-Lord’s Medical Laboratories, Satellite Town, Lagos, admonishes, “Nigerians should maintain the same high level of hygiene they imbibed during the Ebola outbreak. Contagious diseases break out from time to time, so you don’t have to practice good hygiene today and discard it tomorrow. It should be an ongoing thing. Nigerians should make personal hygiene a habit.”
May the souls of the departed find eternal rest, and may we not tell a similar story by this time next year.
CHUKS OLUIGBO
