Benue records 46 Lassa Fever cases, 9 deaths

From Uche Nnorom, Makurdi

Benue State has reported increase in number of Lasaa Fever cases with over 46 persons infected across seven local government areas of the State.
The State Epidermologist Dr. Sam Ngishe who disclosed this to newsmen in Makurdi on Thursday, said the affected local government areas are Obi, Okpokwu, Gwer West, Makurdi, Guma, Gwer East and Ukum.
He also, intimated that 9 deaths have been recorded and all corpses buried in accordance with safe burial protocols across the various areas of state where they hail from.
According to Dr. Ngishe, “the State has continued to sustain response through the intervention of the Federal Government, World Bank and National Centre for Disease Control, NCDC.
“It’s actually an increase compared to what we had last year.We have spoken loudly to enhance our surveillance efforts, risk communication (creating social behaviourial change) in the community, they have also spoken to the laboratory component of the response and coordinations.
“Now, we are hoping to reduce the numbers of the deaths such that the key fatality rate for the state is less than 10 percent which is what the national expects from all of the states. For now, what we have is above that figure.
“The first case was noticed in week 50 of last year. As you know, generally that there are shortage of personnel and Benue State is not exempted, however we are looking forward to such capacity staff that will join and help us in the course of the response.
“When you have lots of cases, you inform the government, the partners and keep improving on them. We have reported cases in the IDP camps, precisely Ortese and we took several samples as well from the host community but we did not pick any other positive case from the samples taken.