About 15 persons died from the deadly Lassa fever in Ondo State between January and February 2019, while 102 persons were infected within the same period.
The Chairman of Ondo State Chapter of the Nigerian Medical Association, Dr. Wale Oke made this known to journalists in Akure.
He identified the areas affected by the disease as, Owo, Ose, Akoko North, Akure South and Akure North local government areas.
“As of Thursday February 21, 2019, 102 people have been positive to Lassa fever, 82 people in January and 20 people so far in February. About 15 people have died in January as a result of the fever but no death has been recorded so far in February.
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“Most people that died either reported late or were already subjected to alternative treatment and doing self-medication before they eventually came to hospital. Their kidneys and livers had been affected as a result of the delay,” he said
The Medical doctor with the Federal Medical Centre, FMC, Owo, advised residents of the state to visit the medical centre on time if they experienced upsurge of temperature in their bodies, noting that the centre had the highest success rate out of the three centres for Lassa fever treatment in Nigeria.
“We have contact tracing mechanism whereby we can place on surveillance for 21 days those that may have contact with an infected person.
“We continue to monitor their temperature if it is above 37.8 and ask them quick for treatment,” he stated.
Oke also disclosed that the state government had put in place measures to curtail the fever even as it had declared a state of emergency in the health sector.
As part of efforts to reduce the spread of the disease in the state, the NMA Chairman said his chapter in collaboration with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and other stakeholders had carried out series of sensitisation programmes for the people of the state.
