Nigeria: How Entire Family Was Wiped Out By Lassa Fever

21 March 2009

The death toll from a fresh outbreak of Lassa Fever increased penultimate Saturday when an eight year old boy and another adult male patient lost their lives to the disease at Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital ( ISTH), Edo State.

The hospital had admitted seven patients suffering from the disease that weekend. This was disclosed Dr. Danny Asogun, Director of the hospital's Institute for Lassa Fever Research and Control ( ILFRC) while speaking to Saturday Vanguard at Irrua Wednesday last week.

It was gathered that among members of the deceased family were two medical doctors including one who was based in the United States. Saturday Vanguard learnt that the US-based medical doctor had returned home for the burial of his parents who had died almost at the same time after being afflicted by the mysterious disease. However, the US-based doctor had hardly returned to his foreign station when he was informed that his younger brother, also a medical doctor who had attended the burial but was still practicing within the country had died. A short-while after, the US-based doctor himself fell ill and died.

However the shock waves generated by these multiple deaths that occurred in quick succession were still reverberating within the community and beyond when news reached Ekpoma that the deceased American-based doctor had been diagnosed to have suffered from Lassa Fever by the Centre for Disease Control of that country. That was when the alarm bell about the killer disease rang in Edo State.

According to Dr. Asogun, " the CDC of US had taken samples from the blood of the sick doctor before he died. It was after this blood sample was screened by the centre that it was realised that the he had died from Lassa fever".

He continued : " Meanwhile there were rumours within the local community that maybe it was witchcraft or something like it, that was responsible".

Dr. Andrew Dongo, a Consultant Surgeon at ISTH also informed Saturday Vanguard that for a long time other doctors practicing within Ekpoma and its environs had known about the existence of the severe disease and its symptoms which appeared similar to those of other common ailments but all the same killed its sufferers within days of infection. However, these local doctors had no name for the disease.

"Local doctors around within Edo North and Central Zones knew of the disease because some of the patients would bleed from their noses and mouths while others would experience convulsions. Sometimes they thought it was malaria, at other times they called it typhoid or several other names" Dr. Dongo remarked.

He continued: "All this continued to happen until Dr.Omoigbe died and the CDC came with Prof. Tomori in 1989. That was when it became known that this strange disease was Lassa Fever."

He disclosed that some of the villagers had even deserted the village of Umudume-Ekpoma due to the strange multiple deaths which wiped out the entire family before the findings by the CDC were disclosed to the public.

He said this situation was similar to what prevailed in other West African countries who belonged to the Mano River Union where the disease had been endemic since the 1960s.

Dr Dongo maintained that there is a high possibility that similar deaths were taking place in many other communities in different parts of Nigeria today without the people realising that Lassa Fever was responsible because they would not have a way of knowing what was happening. He explained that many of such cases would end up requiring surgical intervention due to the abdominal pain normally associated with the disease adding this was usually very risky for surgeons if they assumed the patient was suffering from say appendicitis.