Lassa Fever Kills Thousands

     

How to avoid Lassa Fever

— 6th February 2018

Ben Okafor. Lagos |

What it is

It has no known vaccine. Its general symptoms – headaches, weakness, fever, vomiting – are indistinguishable from Malaria; and its more terrifying signs – bleeding from the mouth, nose, other orifices and the gastrointestinal tract – are not dissimilar to the effects of Ebola.

It is hard to diagnose and even harder to treat once it is misdiagnosed as say, appendicitis, for instance, causing a delay in the early administration of its most effective antiviral medication, Ribavirin.

So what is this common yet unsettling illness that is being reported in states as far apart as Delta and Gombe, in a country where just last month alone 21 people died as a result, triggering major health crises anywhere new cases appear?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) calls Lassa Fever “a zoonotic disease, meaning that humans become infected from contact with infected animals.”

The host animal in the case of Lassa Fever – a disease that was first described in 1969 in Lassa, Borno state – is the common household mouse, referred to as the “multimammate rat” (or Mastomys rodent for short). As carriers, the rodents “do not become ill, but shed the virus in their urine and faeces.”

It is human contact with the urine and faeces of these carrier rats, usually via food or other household items contaminated with them, that transmits the virus from animal to human, which subsequently passes from human-to-human through contact with the bodily fluids (blood, urine, faeces, and other bodily secretions) of the infected person. The virus can even be sexually transmitted via semen for up to three months after infection.

As one of West Africa’s most common viral hemorrhagic disease, the risk of contagion is especially dire in rural areas, and urban areas with poor sanitation and crowded conditions – squalid settings where the Mastomys rat can hover, multiply and spread the infection unbeknownst to humans.

Worse? Lassa Fever is 80% asymptomatic, meaning that just 20% of those infected develop symptoms; implying that most people who have it might not even know it.