by Ogunsola Oluwatosin
Lassa fever is a disease usually contacted from rats.
It is an acute and often fatal disease with fever. This illness was discovered
in the year 1969, when two missionary nurses died in Nigeria. The virus is
named after the town in Nigeria where the first cases occurred.
Lassa fever is endemic in parts of West Africa
including Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and Nigeria. However, other neighbouring countries are
also at risk as the animal vector for the virus, the “multimammate rat” is
distributed throughout the region.
According to a research carried out by World Health
Organisation, in rare cases, the disease can be transmitted from person to
person through direct contact with an infected person’s blood or bodily fluids,
through mucous membrane, or through sexual contact. The virus is not
transmitted through casual contact, and patients are not believed to be
infectious before the onset of its symptoms.
The disease is now spreading vast like wild fire in Nigeria.
Nigerian citizens are now so afraid of rats and other rodents so much that they
even abstain from taking cassava flakes (garri), because they believe rats
mostly infect the cassava flakes and there is no safe way of detecting the
virus in it.
With the rate at which different diseases are taking
many lives in Nigeria, it’s just a matter of time before Nigeria start
experiencing “under population”.
Nigerian government should create medically
educational programs which will be aired on local stations where most of the
population within the country will be able to view it, and also they should see
to it that medical care is taken extremely serious in Nigerian hospitals before
more devastating damage is caused in the country.
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