Prof. Dennis Agbonlahor, a member of the National Committee on the Control of Lassa fever, says the trials of newly developed Lassa virus vaccine in the country was a welcome idea.
Agbonlahor said this while presenting a paper titled “Combating Lassa fever: A National Health Challenge”, organised by the University of Benin on Friday in Benin.
He said that the vaccine developed by a combined team from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases and the Public Health Agencies of Canada was a promising vaccine for controlling Lassa fever.
According to him, “this live and harmless vaccine, which is wrapped in a strain of vaccinia virus, contains a protein produced by the Lassa virus.
“Once injected into the body, the presence of the Lassa protein stimulates a protective response from the immune system. The humans that will take it as a vaccine will be protected and antibodies will be developed that will protect the persons against future effect of Lassa virus if infected.”
He also commended the Federal Government for creating more awareness about the disease calling for sustenance of the awareness initiative.
He added that the virus had killed more than 100,000 Nigerians since the discovery of the virus in the country, calling for more funding and political will to combat the scourge.
Meanwhile, the Director of Disease Control in the state Ministry of Health, Dr Osamwonyi Irowa, said that the State Government had not relented on its effort to make the state a Lassa virus-free state.
He said that a lot of structures had been put in place to combat the virus across the 18 local government areas of the state.
“We have improved our surveillance mechanism and contact tracking to follow up suspected cases. To this end, no new case has been reported in the state for the past days,” he said.

(NAN)