A growing Lassa
fever outbreak in Nigeria has killed 101 people, as West Africa battles
to contain a flare up of the virus, according to data from the nation’s
health authorities released Saturday.
Nigeria Centre for Disease (NCDC)
statistics show that reported cases of the haemorrhagic disease — both
confirmed and suspected — stood at 175 with a total of 101 deaths since
August.
“As at today, 19 (including Abuja)
states are currently following up contacts, or have suspected cases with
laboratory results pending or laboratory confirmed cases,” the NCDC
said in a statement.
Deaths from the virus were recorded in
the nation’s political capital, Abuja, Lagos, and 14 other states, the
NCDC said. While health authorities assure Africa’s most populous
country of more than 170 million they have the virus under control,
there are fears the actual scale of the outbreak is under-reported.
The outbreak of Lassa fever was only
announced in January — months after the first case of the disease
happened in August — with subsequent deaths reported in 10 states,
including Abuja.
Last year, 12 people died in Nigeria out
of 375 infected, while in 2012 there were 1,723 cases and 112 deaths,
according to the NCDC. In neighbouring Benin at least nine people have
died in a Lassa outbreak, with a total of 20 suspected cases, health
authorities said Tuesday.
Benin was last hit by a Lassa fever
outbreak in October 2014, when nine people suspected of having the virus
died. The number of Lassa fever infections in West Africa every year is
between 100,000 to 300,000, with about 5,000 deaths, according to the
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Lassa fever belongs to the same family
as Marburg and Ebola, two deadly viruses that lead to infections with
fever, vomiting and, in worse case scenarios, haemorrhagic bleeding. Its
name is from the town of Lassa in northern Nigeria where it was first
identified in 1969.
Endemic to the region, Lassa fever is
asymptomatic in 80 percent of cases but for others it can cause internal
bleeding, especially when diagnosed late.
The virus is spread through contact with
food or household items contaminated with rats’ urine or faeces or
after coming in direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected
person.
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