There is nobody on Earth who is not troubled by the coronavirus epidemic ravaging the world now. Coronaviruses are a group of viruses (named for the crown like shape) that cause diseases in mammals and birds, ranging from mild respiratory infections to lethal outbreaks like the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome the world suffered in 2003. There are seven strains of human coronaviruses, including the novel one (being a new discovery) we know today as Wuhan pneumonia or Wuhan coronavirus.
First diagnosed in the Chinese city of Wuhan last December, there is growing fear that the situation could rapidly get worse as business visitors travel out of China and hundreds of thousands of Chinese troop out of the cities, to return to their local communities to mark the Chinese New Year, a major and highly treasured event in the Chinese calendar. Thousands of Chinese are also headed back to their work stations in far-flung countries. Nigeria is a host to many of these diplomats, businesspeople, and tourists. We also have countless Nigerians who are on business trips to China, and others who are planning to travel there.
Our government has announced the commencement of containment measures which include screening in-bound passengers for fever with special whole-body heat sensors, at ports of entry like international airports. We have gone through this road before, when the Ebola virus hit Nigeria as a Liberian diplomat literally imported the epidemic into the country.
Therefore, we can do it again. The never-say-die spirit we all demonstrated; and the rare patriotic vigour especially displayed by the courageous Dr Stella Adadevoh, who paid the ultimate price to save her compatriots, helped to cast a permanent mould for the template of emergency-preparedness that we need to fall back on, at a time like this. Because the world’s scientific community is still battling to understand the true nature of the virus and how to come up with a vaccine, the best we can do is hope and pray for a divine intervention.
But in the case of another local epidemic our country is presently grappling with, calling for a divine intervention could be somewhat hypocritical. Lassa fever is named after Lassa village in Borno State, where two missionaries died in 1969 after being infected with the predominantly West African deadly viral hemorrhagic disease. After over 50 years, Nigeria has yet to overcome the infection, which is preventable.
Lassa fever is usually initially spread to people via contact with the urine or faeces of an infected multi-mammate mouse. Spread can then occur via direct contact between people. The best ways of preventing human infection are to reduce the rat population and avoid any contact with rat excreta. To avoid contact with rat excreta, people are advised to always wash their hands before handling and eating food; store food in covered containers; cook all foods thoroughly and discourage rats by clearing away any rubbish in or around the house, and keeping a cat.
On the one hand, the government seems not to be creative enough to tackle Lassa fever. On the other hand, many of our politicians and public officers use the opportunity presented by the perennial epidemic to bleed the country dry.
A casual observation will easily reveal that the government’s body language reeks of crass insipidity. At the present outbreak, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control issued a statement recently and said that the increase in the number of cases of Lassa fever at this time of the year is not unusual, due to ecological factors. By “ecological factors”, the agency meant that because Lassa fever is caused by multi-mammate rat, which usually invades human living quarters at the end of the planting season, we are officially in the open season. In other words, government does not do anything to prevent it, but waits until it starts killing Nigerians!
So, year in and year out, the government expects a body count. Once the Lassa fever deaths are reported across the country, the NCDC activates a National Emergency Operations Centre. The NEOC includes representatives from the National Emergency Management Agency, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Federal Ministry of Environment, World Health Organisation, UNICEF, the US Centre for Disease Control, and other partners.
This means Nigerians should not yet expect respite from the outbreak because the Lassa fever season in the country peaks from November to May. The country has no effective measures to curb the spread of the killer disease and has so far focused only on curative measures. This is why health agencies embark on contact tracing of persons who have been suspected to be in contact with patients. This has become a yearly occurrence with hundreds of people infected and dozens of deaths recorded apiece. But to me, that there is no vaccine for the disease does not mean that we cannot conquer it. It is highly preventable.
This brings us to the second matter of corruption. Our politicians cash in on the preventability of Lassa fever to syphon money through the so-called constituency projects. Sometime in 2016, when working with an indigenous non-governmental organisation on ascertaining how climate-friendly our annual budget was, I came face to face with a novel project that was as ingenious as it was disingenuous. They were budget heads for a project captured as “Deratisation of…” It is not necessary to mention the towns to be deratised.
Deratisation is an English word, which means extermination of rats, especially aboard a merchant vessel. This effectively means that the constituency projects captured in the Nigerian budget was essentially for the killing of rats, running into tens of millions of naira.
Interestingly, the justification for the project is that rats are vectors of epidemics like Lassa fever and others. Therefore, in order to prevent such a future outbreak of Lassa fever, the towns needed to be fully deratised. Now, how will anybody be able to monitor such project? What are the indicators of success? Of course, the legislators, whom I suspected were on a budget padding exercise, were fully aware that whether they deratised or not, the other “Oga at the top” must have another budget for Lassa fever annual ritual. So, why waste your time deratising?
Meanwhile, if our government and its functionaries (elected and nonelected) were serious, Lassa fever would not be dealing with us the way it presently does. In fact, it is easier to prevent the epidemic than to respond when it has already hit the town. A proper eco-based strategy will not only end the deaths, but will also create employment by raising a new corps of homegrown rustic green soldiers augmenting the work of mainstream environmental health officers, the same way vigilantes help the police.
The overall strategy is simple: At the end of the rainy season in Nigeria, around September, rodent populations peak, having thrived on all the food available in the lush farms. Then dry season hits. Around October, farmers start to clear their farms for a new season of planting the following year. This pushes the rats out of the croplands and into villages in search of food. Some of these rodents may carry the Lassa virus. Following this cycle, immediately the planting season ends, decontamination and quarantine should be deployed to identified hotspots, with the primary aim of preventing a wholesale invasion of rats from farms to human habitat
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