It’s now authentic that the Lassa virus has found its way into the centre of excellence, as the first case of the disease was confirmed in the state last Friday.
According to the Commissioner for Health, Dr Jide Idris, the patient, a 25 year old male undergraduate of the Ahmadu Bello University, Kaduna, is presently being managed at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital and his condition is stable.
In a swift reaction to curb the spread of the disease, the state government has sealed off the facility, the Ahmmadiyyah Hospital in the Ojokoro area of the state, where the patient was attended to, before heading to LUTH.
Speaking in a telephone interview during Sunrise Daily this morning, the minister of Health, Dr. Isaac Adewole urged health practitioners to desist from seeing the outbreak as a failure on their part, adding that such reasoning could prevent them from disclosing cases of the disease in their states.
His words: “I think at professional level, people must just admit that an outbreak should not be considered as a fault in the system but as something to be reported and actively to be presented”.
The Minister said that the Ministry of Health is in touch with all Commissioners of Health in the country, stressing that they would be meeting on Tuesday under the auspices of the National Council on Health.
“We have also dispatched drugs to the state and we are reactivating all our treatment and diagnostic centres in a bid to ensure that we are able to make diagnosis promptly.
“We are also sending teams all over the states to ensure that we uncover cases that hitherto, were not reported.”
Meanwhile, the Federal Government is set to inaugurate National Lassa Fever Action Committee on Tuesday, in order to forestall further spread of the disease.
The Director, Media and Public Relations in the Federal Ministry of Health, Mrs Boade Akinola, stated this in a statement made available to journalists in Abuja yesterday.
The statement also quoted prof. Adewole, as indicating that the ministry would convene an Emergency National Council on Health meeting to discuss the on-going Lassa fever outbreak in the country. It is hopeful that this committee will do justice to the outbreak.
