Six suspected Lassa fever patients have escaped from the isolation centre, while four have been confirmed dead in Nasarawa state.
Director of Public Health in the State Ministry of Health, Peter Attah, confirmed this to newsmen in Lafia.
He said the escapees were brought to the facility by the health ministry’s response team on suspicion that they might be at risk, following their contact with a patient believed to have died of complications from the disease.
He said as soon as his office was alerted of the escape, a team from the ministry and the teaching hospital tracked them to the home of a relation in Lafia and ensured they did not mingle with other persons.
Attah downplayed concerns about the disease spreading from the escapees, explaining that their blood samples were sent to a reference lab at the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in Abuja, and the test results later came back negative.
“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.
However, Disease Surveillance Officer, Ahmad Yahuza Abdullahi, confirmed to Blueprint that four persons, including two pregnant women, have been confirmed dead from the outbreak in Awe local government area of the state.
He said the woman who died earlier at the General Hospital in Awe showed Lassa fever symptoms, and the husband, who is also a patient at the facility, died seven days later with the same symptoms.
Abdullahi said as a result of the development, the hospital has been temporarily shut down for fumigation.
Also speaking, a nurse at the Awe General Hospital, who attended to the two deceased pregnant women, Mr. Ovey Polycarp, said the two women were brought to the hospital almost at the same time with symptoms resembling malaria, but their conditions deteriorated to bleeding and haemorrhage, which led to their deaths.
“We are living in fear because we do not have protective equipment to manage the outbreak,” he said
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