Abstract
Abstract. Lassa fever is an acute viral illness, which is endemic in some counties in West Africa, including Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and parts of Nigeria. It is caused by the Lassa virus, which is primarily hosted by multi-mammate rats that live in and around houses. This study sees the need to enhance public awareness by producing risk maps of Lassa fever for the study area. In a bid to understand and predict the prevalence of the disease in Akure South Local Government Area. Temporal and spatial analyses of Lassa fever cases were carried out, information about related environmental variables such as temperature, rainfall, vegetation, and elevation were obtained. These data sets from primary and secondary sources were integrated independently as predictor variables for the developed risk model. The accessibility of incidences of Lassa fever to health centres was determined and analysed. The risk map produced indicates that areas about the Ijoka community are at higher risk of being affected by a future Lassa fever outbreak than other areas. The model developed an understanding of the high risk and potential outbreak of Lassa fever to alert the general public of the virus to curb the future outbreak. However, future research can be on the control and prevention of Lassa fever in the study area.
Highlights
Background to the StudyThe World Health Organization (WHO) defined health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity
This map shows the location of where Lassa fever has occurred and predictive measures that show where is prone to Lassa fever occurrence to occur
The study discovered that almost all Akure South Local Government's health facilities are accessible for treating Lassa fever
Summary
Background to the StudyThe World Health Organization (WHO) defined health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Lassa fever was first quarantined in 1969 when two missionary nurses became sick and died in Lassa, Nigeria. Starting of Lassa fever into humans occurs through a planned orunplanned connection with the excreta of the natural reservoir, the rodent Mastomys natalensis, precise modes of transmission are not well characterised (Monath TP et al, 1974). The disease occurs in all age groups and both sexes. For this reason, the World Health Organization recorded LF among main concern diseases requiring urgent research and development attention (Gibb, Moses, Redding, & Jones, 2017). The most recent outbreak of Lassa fever started on 16 December 2016 in Ogun State, Nigeria. The disease eventually increased in number and spread to 14 other states in Nigeria,and to three neighbouring countries of Benin, Togo and BurkinaFaso (WHO, 2017)
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