Nigeria has set up an emergency response centre to contain rising cases of Lassa fever after 26 people were killed in the past three weeks, the country’s disease control agency said.
Endemic to Nigeria, Lassa fever belongs to the same family as the Ebola
and Marburg viruses, but is much less deadly.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) said on Wednesday it
had activated the national Lassa fever Emergency Operations Centre
(EOC) in response to the outbreak in some parts of the country.
Lassa fever is spread by contact with rat faeces urine or the bodily fluids
of an infected person.
Most of those infected do not show symptoms but severe bleeding and
organ failure can occur in about a fifth of cases.
Infection numbers in Nigeria typically climb around the start of the year,
a phenomenon that is linked to the dry season.
The virus takes its name from the town of Lassa in northern Nigeria,
where it was first identified in 1969.
