The Lagos State Government on Sunday said nine suspected cases of Meningitis recorded on Lagos Island have proved negative after the affected individuals were subjected to clinical laboratory tests.
The government insisted that no death has been recorded in the state due to Cerebrospinal Meningitis, CRM, saying that it was serious on the alert to avert any outbreak of the disease.
Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris in a statement disclosed that though the Disease Surveillance Notification Officer, Lagos Island Local Government reported nine suspected cases of meningitis from Massey Street Children Hospital in Week 13 of this year with two deaths, none of these was confirmed as due to the causative agent of CSM.
He further revealed that though all the nine cases presented with clinical features of meningitis at the said hospital, but that laboratory tests proved that they were either due to Haemophilus influenza or Streptococcus pneumoniae and not Neisseria meningitis.
Idris said the report of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC was false, for the avoidance of doubt, there were two main types of meningitis.
“The epidemic prone meningitis which is referred to as Cerebro-spinal meningitis (CSM) is caused by a bacteria called Neisseria Meningitidis and its occurrence is seasonal or cyclical depending on the level of herd immunity and climatic conditions. The second type of meningitis is Non Epidemic Meningitis. This type of meningitis is usually caused by a virus or other bacteria, but not by Neisseria Meningitidis. The Non-epidemic meningitis occurs without any seasonal pattern or periodicity,” he said.
Idris, in addition, said that the Ministry of Health was also notified last week of a three year old boy presenting clinically as meningitis at a registered private facility in Lagos but that the laboratory investigations did not confirm CSM.
According to him “the blood culture yielded no growth but the urine culture yielded Klebsiella and not meningococcus. The patient is already is responding to treatment. None of these cases presented with a history of recent travel to any area with an outbreak of meningitis and neither were visits from such areas recorded with the aforementioned cases”.
Idris reiterated that the Lagos State government’s firm resolve to prevent and control the spread of the epidemic in the state and urged the people of the state to support governmental effort by reporting suspected cases to the nearest public
health facility or call 08037170614, 08023169485.
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