Lassa fever
Fiebre de Lassa
- Date
- 1969 · confidence high
- Place
- Lassa, Borno State, Nigeria
- Credited to
- Jordi Casals and Sylvia Buckley (Yale University) from missionary nurses' samples
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
In 1969 mission nurses at Lassa and Jos (Nigeria) fell ill and died from an unknown haemorrhagic fever; samples sent to Yale allowed an arenavirus to be isolated. It is endemic in West Africa and an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 infections occur each year.
Two members of the Yale laboratory became infected and one died, showing its danger; the name comes from the town of the first case.
What it led to
- maximum-security laboratories and arenavirus studies
- a reservoir in the rat Mastomys natalensis
- treatments with ribavirin