Abuja — The Federal Government has expressed concern over the poor attention paid to lassa fever epidemic that has been ravaging the country, saying the acute viral illness with bleeding and death in severe cases has been claiming an average of 5,000 lives annually since the epidemic first hit Nigeria in the 1980s.

Minister of State for Health, Mr. Gabriel Aduku said the spread and impact of the sickness needed to be checked to forestall a situation where it would overwhelm the population in the near future.

Aduku who spoke at a media sensitisation workshop to herald the Regional Conference on Lassa Fever due to hold this week, said although the Federal Ministry of Health has made some efforts and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Chinese government in 2004, there was an urgent need to step up efforts in the area. This, he said, would ensure steady supply of drugs for treatment of the ailment, provision of functional laboratory services as well as the development of an effective and affordable vaccine for lassa fever.

He recalled that some years ago the Federal Ministry of Health designated three federal tertiary health institutions as centres of excellence for the control and management of the disease. According to Aduku, the three centres namely the Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital, Edo State, Universityof Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, Borno State and the Federal Medical Centre, Owerri, Imo State needed to be strengthened through an update of their facilities to contain the disease.

He, however, assured the Lassa Fever Stakeholders Forum, conveners of the regional conference of government's continued support in the task of combating Lassa fever in the country.

Chief Medical Director, Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital, Professor Godwin Akpede disclosed that the conference is aimed at developing capacity towards containing the challenge of the epidemic in the West African sub-region, delineate the constraints militating against success in the efforts to reduce the prevalence, incidence and mortality arising from the disease and developing strategies for the control and eradication of the disease.

Lassa fever was first encountered in the 1950s, while the virus was identified in 1969.

The virus is named after Lassa, the town in Borno State, North Eastern Nigeria where the first case of the disease occurred. Since then some states in Nigeria such as Edo, Borno, Nasarawa, Plateau, Ebonyi and Imo have suffered ravages of the epidemic.

It is endemic to Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. The disease, said to be spread by rats, are however, found throughout West Africa and the actual geographic range of the disease may be more extensive as evidence of the infection has also been found in the Central African Republic, Congo, Mali and Senegal.