No fewer than 15 new cases of the dreaded Lassa fever infection have
been discovered in Bauchi State, out of which 3 have been confirmed and
are presently receiving treatment at the infectious diseases isolation
centre of the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital
(ATBUTH), Bauchi.
Giving an update on the situation in the state, Executive Secretary
of the Bauchi State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (BASPHCDA),
Dr. Rilwanu Mohammed during an interactive session with journalists on
Friday in his office said that the remaining 13 suspects of the
infection are presently under surveillance by officials of the agency
and other health care agencies in the state.
The Executive Secretary, however, said that as at the time of the
briefing there was no record of any death in the state since the
outbreak stressing that health officials are doing everything possible
to curtail the outbreak.
Mohammed further said that the 15 samples of the suspected cases have
been sent to the National Disease Control Center in Abuja for testing
to authenticate them stating that although Lassa fever epidemic was not
new in the state which he described as “an endemic state for Lassa
fever.”He said.
“We heard of the news of some deaths in Kano as a result of Lassa
fever and there are a lot of speculations going on regarding Bauchi
state. This year in Bauchi, we have recorded 15 suspected cases of Lassa
fever, 3 have been confirmed while others turned out to be negative”.
“What happened was that a lady who lives in Kano came back to Bauchi
to see her family and stayed for some days in Bauchi for some time and
later travelled to a village in Toro LGA. The highest and greatest risk
LGAs in the state for Lassa fever are Toro, Bauchi and Tafawa Balewa
where we have many cases”, he added.
The BASPHCDA secretary added that “So she went there and that was
where the infection started but I don’t want to say anything more
because as an epidemiologist, I don’t talk about what didn’t happen here
in Bauchi. But the initial stage of the infection was Toro LGA.”
He said in December last year, the National Center for Disease
Control sent a mail to them informing them of a possible outbreak of the
disease this year and advising them to watch out for the outbreak of
Lassa fever, yellow fever and meningitis in Bauchi state.
They Should keep watching from December last year to March this year
and be active in surveillance. We are on the alert, in fact, almost all
our money in this Agency has been channelled towards surveillance.
Our doctors and Nurses are afraid because you cannot know whether
anybody that has fever is suffering from Lassa fever or not. We have
told our doctors that any patient that comes with fever should be
regarded as Lassa fever,” he stated.
He informed that over the years, the agency had found out that most
of the people that died from Lassa fever in Bauchi were due to renal
failure and stressed the need for a dialysis machine to attend to Lassa
fever cases since there are dialysis machines for other diseases, “so we
need to have a particular machine for that infection so that we won’t
transmit it to others, ” noting that it will cost N10 million to be
acquired.
According to him, since the last time that there was an outbreak of
the disease, the Federal Government decided to upgrade the Lassa fever
camp situated at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching
Hospital, Bauchi to a Center for Disease Control.