Lucky Obukohwo, Reporting
Lassa Fever has swept through seven local government areas of Benue State, leaving nine persons dead while 46 others are currently down with the infection in the state.
The Commissioner of Health in the state, Dr Yanmar Ortese, in a text message, told journalists in Makurdi that there are 35 confirmed cases out of which were five health workers and four persons from the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp.
He also confirmed that five persons have died so far.
Speaking further on the issue, the State Epidemiologist, Dr Sam Ngishe said,”What the Commissioner gave you is based on situation report for week seven. We have not updated him on week eight.
“Altogether, as at this moment we are speaking, from result gotten so far, Benue has 46 cases of Lassa spread across seven local government areas to including Obi, Okpokwu, Gwer West, Makurdi, Guma, Gwer East and Ukum.
“It is actually an increase compared to what we had last year. So far, we have nine deaths in confirmed cases as we speak.
“We have been able to bury all the dead in accordance with safe burial protocols across the various areas of state where they hail from.
“We have sustained response through the intervention of the Federal Government, the World Bank, and the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, (NCDC).
“They have spoken loudly to enhance our surveillance efforts, risk communication (creating social behaviour change) in the community, they have also spoken to the laboratory component of the response and coordinations.
“Now, we are hoping to reduce the numbers of the deaths such that the key fatality rate for the state is less than 10 percent which is what the national expects from all of the state.
“For now, what we have is above that figure,” he said.
Ngishe, who revealed that the first case was noticed in week 50 of year 2023, lamented general shortage of personnel saying Benue State is not exempted.
He said they were looking forward to such capacity of staff that will join them and help in the course of response.
“We have reported cases in the IDP camps, precisely Ortese and we took several samples as well from the host community but we did not pick any other positive case from the samples taken.
“However, there is active surveillance going on in the community as you know that the IDP camp is a cluster setting with very poor infection control in terms of poor sanitation, crowded environment and they have issues of malnutrition.
“From our report so far, the IDP camp has high population of rats; so if the rat transmitting such are within the IDP camps, it means that we need to work hard so we don’t have an outbreak that will be difficult to control.”