Rat race with Lassa fever

We are grappling with many issues in Nigeria including Amotekun, but here comes another outbreak of the dreaded haemorrhagic disease Lassa fever. Meanwhile, the world as a whole is shivering at the onset of a new respiratory disease in China, the coronavirus 2019-nCoV. The latest Lassa fever outbreak in Nigeria has already claimed 29 lives […]

We are grappling with many issues in Nigeria including Amotekun, but here comes another outbreak of the dreaded haemorrhagic disease Lassa fever. Meanwhile, the world as a whole is shivering at the onset of a new respiratory disease in China, the coronavirus 2019-nCoV.

The latest Lassa fever outbreak in Nigeria has already claimed 29 lives while 195 people have tested positive for it in eleven states. Most of the patients so far were from Ondo, Edo and Ebonyi but given that this virus is transmitted by rats, no part of Nigeria is safe. Rats are scurrying all over Nigerian bushes are in most Nigerian homes, where they nibble at our food and drop their faeces, which might contain the Lassa virus.

At the weekend, Chinese scientists reported their belief that this coronavirus, first identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan, was transmitted by snakes. Snakes, on their part, got it by eating bats. It then jumped into humans through a seafood market in Wuhan, which sells snakes as food. They arrived at this conclusion from an analysis of the protein codes favored by the new coronavirus. They compared it to the protein codes from coronaviruses found in different animal hosts and found that the protein codes in 2019-nCoV are most similar to those used in snakes. In short, even as we Nigerians are in a deadly race against rats, we should also be looking over our shoulder at snakes. If 2019-nCoV ever arrives in Nigeria, it will most likely be brought by humans, not snakes.

I was thinking at the weekend about these diseases, which unleash themselves upon the human race every few years. The first such epidemic that I personally remember was the great cholera epidemic of 1970, which claimed thousands of lives in Africa and India. People collapsed and died within minutes from vomiting and diarrhoea. On my way back home from primary school one day, I found my cousin Bajini sitting on a bench near the motor park, eating sugar cane. Just before I got home, a man overtook me on a bicycle and informed my grandfather that Bajini had just died from cholera.

In 1983, Nigerian newspapers and radio stations exploded with stories about the outbreak of the cattle disease rinderpest. Whole cattle herds were being infected with the viral disease. Reports at the time said the virus was passed to cattle by buffalo herds in Yankari Game Reserve. President Shehu Shagari and state governments scrambled, deployed vet teams in brand new Land Rovers to roam the countryside and inoculate cattle.

Rinderpest caught the Federal Government off-guard because, since 1974 when General Yakubu Gowon abolished jangali in his budget speech, Nigerian governments became non-challant about the country’s cattle wealth. In colonial and early post-colonial times, the old Native Authorities and the Northern Regional government were always well prepared for rinderpest and other cattle diseases. This was because in those pre-oil days, jangali was one of their most important revenue sources. Governments also forgot about cattle routes and grazing reserves, leading to the problems of today. While the rinderpest scare lasted, Nigerians were afraid of eating beef.

In late 1983, our newspapers again exploded with stories about the outbreak of a genital disease called herpes. Herpes was a game changer on university campuses. Before its debut, the most feared sexually transmitted disease was gonorrhoea. Students called it ‘GC’ after its causative germ, gonococcus or ‘VD’ for venereal disease. In those days a lot of students got gonorrhoea, which caused great pain during urination. Luckily the hospitals had a very effective anti-biotic injection which enabled an infected person to urinate within an hour.

In 1987 we heard about the outbreak in Europe of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy [BSE], popularly called Mad Cow. The worst affected country was Britain, where whole cattle farms were culled. Countries in continental Europe and North America banned imports of British beef. The British did their best to undermine the beef boycott; in 1992 when German Chancellor Helmut Kohl visited London, Prime Minister John Major served beef at a dinner in his honour. The Chancellor ate the beef, which caused an uproar in Germany. The Economist magazine however said in an editorial that Mad Cow had a ten year incubation period and since Kohl was nearly 70, he did not have much to worry about. Although Mad Cow was not reported in Nigeria, there was panic here when a newspaper carried a sensational headline that some Nigerian businessmen had rounded up carcasses of British cows destroyed due to Mad Cow and had shipped them to Nigeria.

The father of all epidemics, HIV/AIDS, exploded on the human race in the 1980s. Human Immunodeficiency Virus was first identified in a French lab in 1981 but the scare reached a crescendo in the mid-1980s. At first we thought HIV/AIDS affected only homosexuals and heroin addicts that shared needles. Its association with sexual transmission soon created a huge social stigma. Government’s response was to urge everyone to go for a test. Not many did since doctors said HIV had no cure. At the height of the scare my friends and I sat down and rued our bad luck, that HIV arrived during our time and poured sand into our romantic gari.

In 2000AD, just when international medical authorities were getting a good handle on HIV, came reports of bird flu outbreak. Rinderpest and Mad Cow had scared us from eating beef; bird flu scared everyone from eating chicken. Thousands of chickens were culled in every Nigerian farm where bird flu was found. Government was supposed to pay compensation to the farmers but in most cases did not. Soon afterwards we heard about the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, SARS, in Asia. I grimaced when I saw pictures on television of two million chicken being culled in Hong Kong.

In 2013 we had the Ebola pandemic. There had been small scale Ebola outbreaks in Uganda and Congo over the years, which were contained. The great Ebola pandemic that began in Guinea in December 2013 soon created the worst international health scare since HIV. It was also more deadly; at a point it looked as if Ebola would wipe out the populations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Ebola arrived in Nigeria through the Sierra Leonean traveler Sawyer, and it rapidly claimed the life of Dr. Adadevoh, who first treated him.

Ebola evoked the biggest national madness in Nigeria when millions of people woke up at midnight and took a salt bath on the say-so of a social media chat. It also earned us an unusual accolade. On the day that WHO certified Nigeria to be Ebola free, CNN said Ebola was contained here because “Nigeria has a very good health care system.” Is that right? Then why is everybody going to Egypt, India and Dubai for treatment?

Just when we were celebrating the end of Ebola, Lassa fever returned with vengeance. It was first identified in 1969 when the virus killed some missionaries in Lassa town in Borno State. Lassa fever makes a return every few years, as it did this year. As far as I know, we have no national policy of dealing with rats, even though many families try to kill them with rat poison. There are few centres in Nigeria capable of diagnosing Lassa fever, and certainly no centre capable of diagnosing 2019-nCoV if it ever comes here from China.

Some years ago, we heard about the outbreak in Latin America of the Zika virus, which causes babies to be born with small heads [microcephaly]. Zika is ferried around by mosquito, which is a thousand times more common around here than rats. Luckily that scare subsided without crossing over into Africa but now, we are in another deadly rat and snake race against Lassa fever and corona virus.