The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) announced that they found seven new Lassa fever cases in Edo, Bauchi, and Kogi states.
The NCDC shared this news on its official website on Friday. They said these seven cases appeared between July 22 and July 28.
What is Lassa Fever? It’s a sickness you can catch from certain rats that mess with your food or stuff in your house. Sometimes, people can give it to each other.
People who get Lassa fever might feel very sick. They might have a fever, headache, sore throat, and feel weak. They might also cough, feel sick to their stomach, throw up, have diarrhea, or have muscle and chest pains. In bad cases, they might even bleed from their ears, eyes, nose, mouth, or other parts of their body.
The NCDC said Edo had four cases, Bauchi had two, and Kogi had one. Luckily, no one died during this time.
But in 2024, 163 people died from Lassa fever. This is a bit better than the 17.3% death rate in 2023, now it’s 17.0% in 2024.
Most of the sick people in 2024 came from Ondo, Edo, and Bauchi states. A smaller number of cases were reported from 25 other states.
In all of 2024, 28 states had at least one person get sick from Lassa fever in 125 local government areas.
Stopping Lassa fever is hard because people go to the doctor too late and because treatment is expensive. The environment in some communities isn’t very clean, which also makes things worse. Plus, many people don’t know enough about this sickness.
Mostly, people aged 31 to 40 got sick, but no health workers caught it during this period.
This increase in sickness is worrying and shows we need to watch out more and try harder to stop it from spreading.
The NCDC wants everyone to follow safety steps and tell their local health office if they feel sick.
The NCDC is also working hard to find people who have been in contact with sick patients and is using control measures to stop the spread.
The NCDC said they will keep an eye on things and work with state health agencies to make sure they respond well.
The National Lassa Fever Multi-partner, Multi-sectoral Technical Working Group (TWG) will also keep making sure everyone is working together to fight this disease.