Nigeria’s latest Lassa fever report is out, here is everything you need to know
Nigeria’s health minister, Prof Isaac Adewole, has declared that the country is no longer posing a threat to the rest of the world regarding Lassa fever.
He made the declaration at a stakeholders’ meeting on Lassa fever organised by the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF).
“In one week now, we have only recorded one case of Lassa fever in the country and we no longer constitute a threat to the global world,” Adewole said.
Adewole was referring to the tagline of the latest Lassa fever Situation Report that was released by the Nigerian Center for Disease Control (NCDC) which is available below.
ncdc latest dataAccording to the publication that was released on Sunday April 22, the only case reported was in Edo state.
In 2018 alone, NCDC said there has been a total of 1865 suspected out which more than 416 were confirmed positive, 9 are probable, 1439 came out negative while 1 still awaits laboratory confirmation.
“Since the onset of the 2018 outbreak, there have been 105 deaths in confirmed cases, 9 in probable cases. Case Fatality Rate in confirmed cases is 25.2%,” NCDC stated.
A total of 21 states have recorded at least one confirmed case across 70 Local Government Areas. The states are Edo, Ondo, Bauchi, Nasarawa, Ebonyi, Anambra, Benue, Kogi, Imo, Plateau, Lagos, Taraba, Delta, Osun, Rivers, FCT, Gombe, Ekiti, Kaduna, Abia and Adamawa. NCDC added that 12 states have exited the active phase of the outbreak while nine States remain active.
Since the onset of the outbreak, a total of 37 health care workers have been affected in eight states led by Ebonyi (16) and Edo (12). Other states are Ondo (3), Kogi (2), Benue (1), Nasarawa (1), Taraba (1), and Abia (1) with eight deaths in Ebonyi (6), Kogi (1) and Abia (1)
While Ebonyi has the highest number of affected health workers, it only has the third highest number of confirmed case trailing behind Edo (42%) Ondo (23%) and Ebonyi (16%) states. These 3 states account for 81% of confirmed Lassa fever cases in Nigeria.
“A total of 4906 contacts have been identified from 21 states. Of these 420 (8.6%) are currently being followed up, 4476 (91.2%) have completed 21 days follow up while 7(0.2%) were lost follow up. 78 symptomatic contacts have been identified, of which 28 (36%) have tested positive from five states (Edo-13, Ondo-8, Ebonyi-3, Kogi -3 and Bauchi-1),” NCDC added.