Plos Current Outbreaks
An outbreak of Lassa Fever (LF) reported and confirmed in Ondo state, Southwest Nigeria in January 2016 was investigated. This paper provides the epidemiology of the LF and lessons learnt from the investigation of the outbreak.
Results: We identified 90 suspected LF case...s of which 19 were confirmed by the laboratory. More than half (52.6%) of the confirmed cases were females with majority (73.7%) in the age group ≥ 15 years. The Case Fatality Rate (CFR) of 63.2% among the laboratory-confirmed positive cases where 9 of 19 cases died, was significantly higher compared to the laboratory confirmed negative cases where 6 of the 65 cases died ( CFR; 8.5%) p ≤ 0.05. Two hundred and eighty-seven contacts of the confirmed cases were identified, out of which 267(93.0%) completed the follow-up without developing any symptoms and 2 (0.7%) developed symptoms consistent with LF and were confirmed by the laboratory. More than half of the contacts were females (64.5%) with most of them (89.2%) in the age group ≥ 25 years.
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Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation and accounts for nearly one quarter of the continent’s maternal, newborn and child deaths. In the spirit of the global Countdown to 2015 for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health and the Nigerian Saving One Million Lives Initiative, these state data profiles... have been designed to prompt and inform policy and programme action.
Without data there can be no accountability. Without accountability we risk making no progress for Nigeria’s women and children. The data included in these profiles come mainly from large-scale, periodic household surveys. Continued efforts are needed to strengthen civil registration, vital statistics and health management information systems, as well as the institutional capacity to gather and use these data.
Updated from 2011, these data profiles can be used to compare progress in different areas, identify opportunities to address specific coverage gaps, and monitor implementation.
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The information provided here can be used to understand the current situation, increase attention to preterm births in Rwanda and to inform dialogue and action among stakeholders. Data can be used to identify the most important risk factors to target and gaps in care in order to identify and impleme...nt solutions for improved outcomes.
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