Why is Nigeria Experiencing a Record-High Outbreak of Lassa Fever?
More people have been diagnosed with the viral disease in the first two months of 2018 than in all of 2017.
In 1969, an American missionary nurse named Laura Wine came down with a troubling fever while working in the Nigerian town of Lassa. The local doctors thought it was probably malaria, but Wine didn’t respond to the usual treatments. She eventually died. Shortly after, two more nurses contracted the same mysterious disease. One also died. The other, Lily Pinneo, was evacuated to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, and survived. From her blood, and those of her colleagues, scientists isolated a new virus, which they named after the town where the infections began.
Since then, scientists have learned a lot about Lassa fever, and the virus that causes it. They discovered that it resides within the and jumps into people who eat food contaminated by
