6 Suspected Lassa Fever Patients Escape From Isolation Centre

There is anxiety in Lafia and Awe local government areas of Nasarawa State following the escape of six persons suspected to have been infected with Lassa fever from the Federal University of Lafia Teaching Hospital Isolation Centre.

The escapees were brought to the facility by the State Ministry of Health’s response team on the suspicion that they may be at risk following their contact with a patient believed to have died of complications from the disease.

The deceased’s wife was said to have died of symptoms suspected to be those of Lassa fever nine days earlier.

LEADERSHIP gathered that when the suspects were brought to the Federal University of Lafia Teaching Hospital, their blood samples were taken and sent to a reference lab at the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC)’s facility in Abuja for testing.

However, before the test outcome, which takes at least three days, is ready, the patients who were said to have been complaining of a lack of food escaped from the Lafia facility, creating tension at their home LGA and Lafia over the possibility of disease spread.

The director of Public Health, in the ministry, Peter Attah, who confirmed the abscondment to our correspondent on Wednesday, dismissed fears of the disease spreading, saying the test result later turned out to be negative.

He said that as soon as his office was alerted to the escape, a team from the ministry and the teaching hospital tracked them to the home of a relative in Lafia and ensured they did not mingle with other persons.

He denied that the deceased died of Lassa fever, stressing that the death of the wife a few days earlier might have heightened the suspicion.

He said the wife was also not confirmed to have suffered from Lassa fever.

“The information we have is that two children of the deceased are already showing symptoms of the disease.

“When the team got there, they brought six people who they feared having had contact with him earlier. As soon as they arrived, we took them to the teaching hospital, where the sample was sent to a reference lab in Abuja for testing. The test sometimes takes up to three days to complete, and the result is not available until then.

“What we do here is that once we suspect, we place the person on treatment because the waiting period of three days could be dangerous for a patient. It was on New Year’s Day that the state epistemologist told me that the patients are complaining of feeding. I reached out to the commissioner for intervention which he gladly approved. But on reaching the facility, we were told that the patients became violent and left. We tracked them to their relatives’ house and ensured that they didn’t interact with other people. We followed up the lab test and all the results turned negative,” he explained.

He said only one person, a pregnant woman also from Awe local government area, died of Lassa fever complications in the state.

However, a ministry official told LEADERSHIP during a visit to Awe that three persons died of the outbreak.

The official said the woman who died earlier at the General Hospital in Awe showed Lassa fever symptoms.

He said the husband who died seven days later was also a patient at the facility and showed the same symptom.

He said as a result of the development, the General Hospital was temporarily shut down for fumigation.