Yellow fever claims 76 lives within 11 days in three States — NCDC

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC),says three states have recently reported a total of 76 deaths suspected to be from yellow fever.

Bauchi, Delta and Enugu states reported that the deaths occurred between November 1 and 11, the Director General of NCDC, Chikwe Ihekweazu, told the News Agency of Nigeria. On Friday, Mr Ihekweazu told NAN that the cases and deaths were reported to the agency by the state epidemiologists of the three affected states.

He disclosed that 74 suspected cases involving 35 deaths were reported from Delta State, 70 suspected cases with 33 deaths from Enugu, and 78 suspected cases with eight deaths from Bauchi State, respectively.

He said from preliminary investigations, three samples from Delta, one sample from Enugu, and eight samples from Bauchi were confirmed as yellow fever from the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test conducted at the NCDC National Reference Laboratory, Gaduwa, FCT.

Mr Ihekweazu stated that most of the cases were males, with ages ranging from 1-55 years, presenting symptoms that included fever, headache, fatigue, jaundice, abdominal pain, vomiting with or without blood, epistaxis, blood in stools/urine.

According to him, as at November 7, the National Yellow Fever Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) was activated to coordinate all response activities across the affected states.