Curtailing the Lassa fever scourge

For certain very obvious reasons, Nigeria’s usually slow and phlegmatic response to emergencies has always taxed the patience and endurance of the people in the country. For instance, but for fortuitous providence a few years ago, the Ebola epidemic could have been more tragic in the number of its victims. So, when the Lassa fever scourge reared its ugly head once again recently claiming a few lives, sending a doctor into the quarantine and putting many others under rigorous medical surveillance in Lagos State, it just was about time to get disconcerted.

The recent outbreak has not been limited to Lagos State as the neighbouring Ogun State and some other hinterland states have also reported some disturbing instances of the viral affliction. To be sure, the Lagos State Ministry of Health has moved swiftly by educating the public and allaying the fears that necessarily follow such tragic outbreaks.

The outbreak of Lassa fever is not new in the country having been intermittently contained over the years but it ought to have been permanently rested if the efforts to curtail it had been persistent and consistent.

Usually vectored by a particular species of the “multimammalate” rats, the regular return of the Lassa fever virus to the Nigerian public space to torment it probably indicates the establishment of the empire of dirt and filth there.

The contact between these rats through infected body fluids, contaminated food and household items and medical equipment has been identified as the main sources of the country’s travails with Lassa fever and the curtailment must logically have to do with minimising such contacts and the enthronement of public hygiene in the country’s public and domestic spaces.

Arguably then, the scourge of Lassa fever may have coincided with the country’s diminution of the services of the public health inspectors of those days of yore in the public spaces like markets and malls. Those giant rats are dominant in such places and it is little wonder then that the polluted public market can only provide contaminated food for the people.

There is a desperate need therefore to maintain public hygiene in all the country’s public places and it used to be tucked comfortably into the ambits of the local authorities in those days who supervised the function efficiently.

However, rather than grow with the expansion of the towns into cities through urbanisation, the function of public hygiene from policy to compliance has been reduced over the years with the deleterious effects of the sprouting of various epidemics and diseases. If the rudiments of public hygiene are strictly adhered to, a lot of these scourges will be effectively mitigated if not totally eradicated.

In some other countries, these simple rudiments of public hygiene are never neglected and compliance with public policy is comprehensively enforced. The spaces in the interstices of the stalls in the markets and the crowded stacks of food items provide commodious habitation for these offensive rodents and their rate of multiplication is frighteningly high.

The public health inspectors must not only be brought back, their knowledge and skills must now be improved to the extent of meeting modern challenges of controlling the prevalence of these harmful vectors. The other seemingly safe states that have not reported the incidence of Lassa fever will however do well by not sitting idle and complacent because of human movement across borders.

All the state governments of the country are requested to buoy their respective local governments’ public health departments with funds and personnel in order to build capacity for an enduring fight against all forms of epidemics. It is such efforts that usually combine not only to improve life expectancy of the nation, but also the lives of the citizens of the country.

There is also the need to embark on wide public enlightenment and education programmes about the symptoms of the virus across the states in order for the ordinary citizens to be able to easily identify it among themselves and to call for immediate professional assistance so that the spread of the scourge can be halted.

The truth is that such experiences of plagues like this, apart from cutting precious lives short, actually wrongly impact on the image of this country and as a self respecting nation, it should be promptly disavowed.