A pregnant woman and two health workers have been confirmed dead following the outbreak of Lassa fever in Kaduna.
The three people including a medical doctor who was undergoing his national youth service year as a corp and a community health nurse died at the Saint Louis Hospital in Zonkwa, area of Zango Kataf local government of the state.
The doctor and the nurse it would be recalled contacted the lassa fever disease after conducting an operation on a pregnant woman who later died of the same disease two weeks ago.
Confirming the outbreak, the state commissioner for health, Professor Jonathan Andrew Nok told journalists, that two weeks ago, there was a pregnant woman that visited the Saint Louis Hospital after she was referred from a clinic in Kamuru.
‘‘She was pregnant and an operation was conducted on her by the doctor and nurse. She subsequently died.”
He added: “The two individuals that died were the people that actually attended to the pregnant woman. She died about two weeks ago. No one thought they would die like that after the woman. The woman died of lassa disease. She was buried properly. And it was after her death that symptoms of lassa started to show on the medical doctor and the community nurse.
“The doctor and the nurse died after they had high temperature consistently for four days,” said the commissioner.
He said that the doctor and nurse showed signs of lassa fever shortly after operating a pregnant woman who was brought in from another hospital in from a primary health care centre in Kamuru in the same local government.
‘‘The woman later died few days after they were tested positive to lassa.’’
