Britain’s Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said that “the total number of confirmed cases of Lassa fever in the country has now reached 3.”
All of the identified cases belong to the same family in eastern England, and they have recently returned from West Africa, where the disease is endemic and continues to spread, according to the agency.
Dr Susan Hopkins, chief medical advisor at UKHSA, said: “Cases of Lassa fever are rare in the UK and do not spread easily between people. injured, to provide appropriate assessment, support and advice.
“UKHSA and the NHS have well-established and robust infection control procedures in place to deal with imported infectious disease cases and will be strengthened,” she added.
Prior to these, there had been eight cases of Lassa fever imported into the UK since 1980, with the last two occurring in 2009.
It is noteworthy that “Lassa fever” is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease, similar to Ebola, and people become infected through exposure to food or other items contaminated with urine or feces of infected mice, and the virus can also spread from person to person through body fluids.
Initially, sufferers have flu-like symptoms such as fever, headache, sore throat, muscle aches as well as diarrhea and vomiting, and in more severe cases, the disease can cause bleeding from the vagina, mouth or nose and severe swelling of the face.
There are regarding 100,000 cases of the disease annually in West Africa, with an average of 5,000 deaths, but regarding 80% of cases are asymptomatic and experts do not know the extent of the disease.
