Health Ministry To Begin Testing New Preventive Vaccine For Lassa Fever

The minister of health, Isaac Adewole, on Thursday January 15, said that the ministry is working on a potential vaccine to be used to prevent the Lassa fever virus While briefing the Senate committee on health headed by Sen. Lanre Tejuoso on the outbreak of Lassa fever in Nigeria, Adewole said that the number of cases presently was 129.

He said that although there was no preventive vaccine for the disease at present, he had been notified of the development of a vaccine to be tested.

He said: “We call it a candidate vaccine and we would want to run it through trials and that takes some time.
Hopefully we will do that this year, once we consider it to be effective and safe then we put it to use.

“If it works then that means that we would be able to immunize people in the affected areas but for now we will continue with our surveillance,” he said.

The minister, who described the outbreak as a national embarrassment, said the virus would have been defeated if there was the political will to implement a roadmap designed in 2012 to forestall future occurrences.

He also said that although there were 1723 cases in 2012, the percentage death rate of the current outbreak was higher.

The minister said in 2012 1723 cases were recorded, but no action plan was implemented to ensure the outbreak would not be repeated in the future.

The federal ministry of health has disclosed that 35 people have lost their lives since the outbreak of the disease in November 2015.

Also 79 people were infected across eight states including Bauchi, Niger, Nasarawa, Kano, Rivers, Oyo and Edo.

https://www.naij.com/696977-health-ministry-begin-testing-new-preventive-vaccine-lassa-fever.html/?jerrywright&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_group=free

Lalasticlala

good

hope it work effectively

This is suppose to test your will and capacity in that seat,but death percent isn't grading your performance positively-more work oga