Still On Lassa Fever Epidemic

Recently, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) said that the state has truthful acold this twelvemonth recorded a full of 871 confirmed cases of Lassa Fever with 162 deaths and a lawsuit fatality complaint climbing to 18.6 percent.

It is instructive to enactment that Lassa fever has killed 883 Nigerians successful conscionable 5 years, yet each January erstwhile the adust play arrives, we enactment amazed by the outbreak. This is not a earthy catastrophe striking without warning—it’s a preventable nationalist wellness exigency that exposes the bankruptcy of our healthcare system.

For decades, this aforesaid 5 states person carried the load of this disease. Ondo accounts for 33 percent of cases, Bauchi 23 percent, Edo 17 percent, Taraba 14 percent, and Ebonyi 3 percent. Together, these states correspond 90 percent of each confirmed infections.

This attraction should person triggered massive, sustained involution programs years ago. Instead, we get yearly concern reports documenting predictable patterns portion communities stay trapped successful cycles of corruption and death.

The illness follows a seasonal bushed that wellness authorities cognize by heart. Cases highest betwixt November and March during the adust play erstwhile multimammate rats determination person to quality dwellings.
Young adults aged 21-30 carnivore the heaviest burden, often breadwinners whose deaths devastate full families. The transmission mechanics is good understood—contact with infected rat excreta. The prevention methods are known. Yet the infections proceed spreading with deadly regularity.

What makes this situation peculiarly infuriating is however preventable it is. Lassa fever is not immoderate mysterious pathogen that stumps aesculapian science. It’s a rodent-borne illness that thrives successful conditions of mediocre sanitation, inadequate housing, and anemic surveillance systems. Countries with akin challenges person successfully controlled comparable diseases done sustained nationalist wellness interventions.
Nigeria has chosen a antithetic path: reactive situation absorption that treats symptoms portion ignoring basal causes.

The healthcare system’s diagnostic failures compound the tragedy. Early Lassa fever symptoms—fever, weakness, headache—mirror malaria, starring to misdiagnosis and delayed treatment. In communities wherever malaria is endemic, healthcare workers often default to malaria attraction protocols without considering different possibilities.

By the clip Lassa fever is correctly diagnosed, patients whitethorn person progressed to terrible stages involving organ harm and hemorrhage, wherever attraction becomes much hard and mortality rates soar.
This diagnostic disorder reveals deeper problems with aesculapian grooming and laboratory capacity. How galore healthcare workers successful high-risk states person received circumstantial grooming connected Lassa fever designation and management? How galore wellness facilities person the laboratory capableness for accelerated diagnosis?
How galore communities person entree to healthcare workers who tin separate betwixt malaria and Lassa fever symptoms? The answers to these questions explicate wherefore lawsuit fatality rates stay stubbornly precocious contempt decades of acquisition with the disease.

Consider what effectual involution would look like. It would commencement with monolithic concern successful lodging improvements successful high-risk communities, including rodent-proofing measures and due discarded absorption systems. It would impact grooming healthcare workers passim the affected regions connected differential diagnosis and aboriginal attraction protocols. It would necessitate establishing accelerated diagnostic capabilities successful agrarian wellness centers, not conscionable tertiary hospitals successful authorities capitals.

Most importantly, it would request sustained backing for prevention programs that run year-round, not conscionable during outbreak seasons. The existent approach—mobilising resources erstwhile cases spike past withdrawing attraction erstwhile numbers decline—guarantees that adjacent twelvemonth volition bring different predictable crisis.

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention publishes elaborate concern reports that papers the scope of the problem. These reports service arsenic humanities records of organization nonaccomplishment alternatively than tools for prevention. Week aft week, they way caller cases, cipher fatality rates, and place affected communities. But tracking illness is not the aforesaid arsenic preventing it.

What we request alternatively is honorable acknowledgment that existent approaches person failed. The flimsy improvements successful immoderate years—like the simplification from 214 deaths successful 2024 to 162 deaths currently—should not obscure the cardinal world that hundreds of Nigerians proceed dying from a preventable illness each year.

Celebrating marginal improvements portion communities stay astatine hazard is similar praising a occurrence section for letting less houses pain down portion refusing to put successful occurrence prevention.

The affected sta...