The respite is over. Lassa fever season is back, and it’s brought Anambra and Delta closer over the River Niger Bridge.
New cases popping up in Asaba have led to the death of a doctor and two others.
The doctor was transferred from El Comfort Clinic in Asaba to Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital in Nnewi where he died hours later.
His wife was ill and moved to Otibhokhae Teaching Hospital in Edo state, but her fever was confirmed as just malaria. According to Dr Nicholas Azinge, commissioner for health in Delta.
She’s been treated for malaria, but her children are under surveillance.
Anambra has confirmed three deaths, but the number of cases suspected to be Lassa is uncertain.
At least 28 people-18 in Anambra and 10 in Delta-are under quarantine or surveillance on account of connection with Lassa fever.
The tracing and tracking down all who have been in contact with any of the dead confirmed for Lassa is ongoing and laborious.
The deaths in Anambra have prompted Enugu to intensify watch on its borders.
It is sending surveillance officers to communities that border Anambra, afraid to leave anything to chance, said Enugu chief surveillance officer Okechukwu Ossai.
“There is high daily mobility of residents of our state to Anambra and vice versa, and we share a near seamless border with Anambra,” he said.
Lassa fever has broken into an epidemic in Nigeria nearly every year since 1969 when it was first identified and named Lassa-after the town in Borno where researchers traced it.
It is endemic in the country, has been for 47 years, killing dozens every year, and all states are at risk, the Nigerian Medical Association has warned in the past.
It has a fatality rate lower than Ebola virus disease, but in one year killed more Nigerians than the Ebola outbreak ever did.
Concern is about relationship with the land and animals. The Lassa virus is carried in multimammate rats (the common soft-furred African rat whose female has a double row of breasts), which normally live in bushes and visit nearby homes for food, contacting the deadly Lassa fever