Re: Nigeria: Lassa Fever
Source:
http://www.vanguardngr.com/content/view/31531/122/
W.A.R (War Against Rats) in Lagos over Lassa fever
Written by Sola Ogundipe
Saturday, 21 March 2009
Fall out of Lassa fever Search, find and destroy? is a slogan that is fast gaining ground in the city of Lagos as several inhabitants of the sprawling metropolis embark on what appears to be a vicious and unprecedented extermination of rats and mice.tbreak:
Granted, there have been no love lost between the average Lagosian and rodents in the environment; this latest level of intolerance is in a class of its own. Such has been the intensity, sincerity and enthusiasm of this ?anti-rat war? that the population of rats known in local parlance as eku asin in Yoruba, jaba in Hausa and nkapia or nkakwu in Igbo is under serious threat. Apparently, the development is coming in the wake of the Lassa fever epidemic that has gripped parts of the nation including Lagos State of late.
Saturday Vanguard gathered that while killing of rats has been a routine activity in densely populated areas such as Mushin, Ketu, Ikotun, Egbeda, Ajegunle, Agege and Ikeja amongst others, it had been more of a pastime and amusement exercise for the layabouts, jobless youths and dregs of the slums of the city.
However, the latest aggression against the rat and mice population smacks of a no-holds-barred battle for supremacy between man and rodent to determine who actually dominates Nigeria?s commercial nerve center.
In homes, schools, offices, shops and virtually every place of human activity, the new attitude of zero-tolerance for rats that has taken root, is not unconnected with recent reports of deaths linked to the Lassa fever outbreak. With this scare on their minds, people are going about the elimination of rats with a passion as if there has been an invasion of the vermin.
With sticks, brooms, traps and poisoned bait fresh, and a renewed resolve, they have engaged rats in a free-for-all battle in which there is ?no retreat, no surrender? to the extent that in quite a number of homes and yards these days, the sight of a rat running up and down or cris-crossing the room has been drastically reduced, thanks to the onslaught.
?We have an epidemic on our hands,? the Minister of Health, Prof Babatunde Osotimehin, remarked last week during a visit to Vanguard corporate headquarters in Lagos. ?Even a single confirmed case of Lassa fever is an epidemic.? He said the Federal Ministry of Health had already put the 36 state Health Ministries on alert, directing them to step up public awareness campaigns on prevention campaign strategies. ?People are being urged to observe and improve community hygiene through proper refuse disposal to discourage rats from taking refuge, and keeping food and drinking water in containers not accessible to rats.?
In the view of Ronke Shobayo, one of the proponents of the anti-rat campaign, ?It is not that we are being overrun with rats, but as you know, attack has always been the best form of defense, and we do not have to wait for these horrendous rodents to take over before we take them out.? Last year, when Ronke, a legal practitioner moved into her new house at Egbeda, there were just a few rats to contend with but now she says there seems to be hundreds of them.
?I?m almost going out of my mind. The pests are everywhere no matter how you try to keep them out. They breed very fast. Worse still, these rats are getting smart. They are no longer caught by poisoned bait or the common traps because they have learned to detect and avoid them, and with this latest Lassa fever epidemic in town, the best thing is to search and destroy rats. I often have to use a stick or broom.?
As for Musibau Omikunle who lives in Mushin, it is not just a war, but a fight to finish with rats. He tells Saturday Vanguard: ?It is bad enough that rats live in our homes, eat our food and destroy our property, should we now let them take our lives? No. We must fight and we are fighting. We are keeping our homes and surroundings as free as possible from rats. We have no choice other than to fight.?
In agreement that it is a fight to the finish is Chukwuma, a trader at Ladipo Motor Parts market, Papa Ajao, Mushin where the vendetta against rats is currently gaining prominence. ?Rats are destructive disease carriers and should not be tolerated for any reason. We are going to wipe them out because they spread all sorts of germs but this one - Lassa fever is the deadliest I have ever heard.
I hear people have died already and I know it can spread quickly within a short period of time. We are trying to keep our environment clean to discourage and prevent rats from breeding. My advice to everyone in Lagos is to set traps in and around their houses and to block all the entrances to rats. ?This is the best way to reduce risk of exposure to the infection by reducing all possible human contact with the rodents which promote the spread of the disease.?
Tayo Ajayi, a housewife residing at Agege notes that many people are aware that rodents are attracted by food, so the kitchen or pantry is their usual point of call. ?They act like gangs and really do swarm. We have a serious problem with rats and it?s an indication of poor sanitation and bad hygiene. For me, I think it is very important to use plenty of traps, actually I use as my as 10 mouse traps in my home even though I believe there are no more than two or three mice there. Bigger buildings need more.? Tayo places her traps in darkened corners, along walls, behind appliances and any areas where droppings have been sighted.
One rat, one trap
But Saturday Vanguard got an interesting insight into the anti-rat war through Kola who claims to have helped to trap and kill more than 100 rats in his area in the last couple of weeks. In a narration that fell short of bragging, he told of his exploits. ?The tiny rats (mice are the dangerous ones) they are fast and very intelligent, but we humans must show them we are smarter. I have a perfect plan for trapping them.
My own plan is the one rat, one trap approach. I do not use poison or gum trap or spring trap. These rats know how to dodge all those. I use a special kind of trap which catches the rat alive. It is a rectangular box with a one-way opening inside, but no exit. It is made of transparent plastic with a fish or meat bait inside.
The rat sees the bait, is attracted, enters the box, and gets trapped. It has never failed, but is a bit expensive because it is one trap for one rat after which you throw the trap and rat into the fire to kill the rat. I don?t advise people to try re-use the trap because the rat may escape if you try to remove it alive.?
Kola says he used to buy the traps from Oshodi or Mushin before he learned to make them himself and even sell to people. He says: ?In trapping mice, traps should be placed about two to three meters apart since they don?t travel very far. Many people make the mistake of placing traps on the floor alone, but do you know rodents are good climbers?
Traps can be fastened with wire to the overhead rafters, beams, tree limbs, and on top of the gutters along the roof line. Care should be taken to set traps in areas where there is evidence of rodent activity such as fresh droppings, teeth marks, burrows, or urine stains.?
He notes that although professional traps do not need to be baited, persons who know better say baiting increases the catch rate in certain situations. When there is not a readily available food source, baits that will cause a strong aroma helps and the bait should be secured as the rodents can easily remove unsecured bait.
But some rats tend to be trapping shy. ?They are shy of new objects and placing unset traps in a new location for a few days will increase the catch. Camouflaging the trap in a shallow pan of grain or sawdust could hide it. Place the bait in a few small placements on the top surface without setting the trap. When the rats start taking the bait, set the trap, leaving one bait placement in the set trap. Rat traps should not be relocated once a good location is found as this will set up a new object reaction. Mice are naturally curious so frequent trap relocations will attract their interest.?
Generally, consensus is that glue boards work better with mice than rats. ?Place the glue boards on a flat surface paying attention to the rodent droppings for correct placement. You shouldn?t use glue boards in a dusty area that would reduce effectiveness. Many times a rat can get off the glue boards, but with mice it can quickly and safely reduce a population.
The glue boards are ideal to use in food plants, kitchens, restaurants, food processing plants, hospitals, residences, zoos and other sensitive areas where the use of poison is prohibited or discouraged. For traps, they are to be placed on a hard surface, perpendicular to a wall so that the trigger end is toward the wall. ?Traps should be set in areas where there is high activity such as fresh droppings, gnawings, rub marks, burrows, or urine stains.
When trapping, whether you use glue traps, snap traps or live traps, the key is to be persistent and aggressive with the trapping. You may need more traps than you think is warranted.
The rat species in question here is Mastomys natalensis which has been identified as the consistent host reservoir for the Lassa virus because of congenital neonatal infection, which results in rats with long-lasting and/or lifelong infection.
A community health worker at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Idi-Araba, Lagos, told Saturday Vanguard that as a result of the mechanism of Lassa fever infection, there is no break in the natural chain from virus to host species. He notes that even though the rats might show no symptoms of the disease, they easily shed the killer virus freely in their urine, droppings and saliva.
?There are so many variants of the Mastomys rat that live in human homes, so the virus is easily transmitted to humans via direct contact with the rat urine, faeces, saliva, blood or contact with excretion- or secretion-infected materials or via ingestion of excretion-contaminated food. Humans can contract the disease from other humans via aerosol transmission (coughing), or from direct contact with infected human blood, urine, or semen.
Victims can also become infected via skin breaks, and via mucous membranes from aerosol transmission from dust-borne particles.? Initially, the disease manifests with malaria-like symptoms and is easily mistaken for malaria, hence it is under-treated or mis-treated.
The highly contagious disease is transmitted traditionally by rat urine/faeces contamination of food, drink and household items/goods. It is also transmitted via body fluids and could be airborne. Symptoms include fever, general fatigue and weakness, headache, sore throat, chest pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, cough, abdominal pain, and red spots.
Lassa fever is a haemorrhagic disease in the class of Ebola and Marburg haemorrhagic fevers because in the advanced/severe cases, it causes a swollen face and massive bleeding from every bodily orifice (eyes, mouth, nose, ears and genitals).
The bleeding is often a predictor of a significantly higher risk of death preceded by shock and vascular collapse. Certain death occurs rapidly if proper and urgent medical attention is not administered.
The clinical picture of Lassa fever is nightmarish. After an incubation period of between 1-24 days, most patients only seek hospital treatment when the identified symptoms begin to show. Some patients experience bleeding from the gums, but there could be differences in its general manifestation.
With mortality rates typically estimated at 15-20 per cent, research of infection vs. mortality rates indicates that less than 1per cent of all Lassa-virus infections in West Africa will eventually result in fatal disease, but could be much higher in people of non-African race.
Antibiotics may also be administered to patients to ward off or treat secondary and/or opportunistic bacterial infections. Currently, there is no effective prophylactic treatment, except for a drug called Ribavirin used for people at high risk. Sadly, no human protective vaccine is currently available.
Lassa fever was first recognized in 1969 in Lassa, Nigeria and subsequent outbreaks occurred in the country as well as in Liberia, and Sierra Leone where 10-16 per cent of all patients admitted to hospitals have the disease.
There is an estimated 100,000-300,000 infections per year in West Africa. About two-thirds of all reported cases are aid to be women, but this might be a result of exposure, rather than a tendency toward greater susceptibility in women to the disease.
At the inauguration of the Lassa Fever Diagnostic and Research Laboratory of the Institute of Lassa Fever Research and Control of the Irrua Specialist Hospital in Edo State, it was stated that 51 million Nigerians are at risk of contracting the disease with the annual number of illness estimated at three million and annual number of deaths put at 58,330. ?Lassa Fever kills in a trail.
It is not uncommon for it to completely wipe out whole families. It is a ?hidden cause? of much talked-about non-decline in maternal and under-five mortality in Nigeria.
Earlier, the Guild of Medical Directors regretted that enough was not been done in the area of research about the disease in Nigeria. But with the coming on board of the new diagnostic and confirmatory research laboratory at Irrua, the three other diagnostic laboratories located at Owerri, Maiduguri and Ibadan will be complemented.
There has been marked rise in Lassa fever cases in recent times. According to the Chief Medical Director of Irrua Specialist Hospital, Prof George Akpede, out of 229 suspected cases reported between January and December 2008, 30 died. Lagos, Ondo, the FCT, Nasarawa and a number of other States have also reported fatalities. The Irrua figure represented about 60 per cent and 80 per cent increases respectively.
The Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital had entered into partnerships with Behard-Notch Institute of Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany, and Harvard University, USA for collaboration in Lassa fever research and control efforts. Part of the collaboration resulted in donation of diagnostic.
Click below to read: How entire family was wiped out by Lassa Fever
http://www.vanguardngr.com/content/view/31547/152/
