Proposed title of the dataset: Epidemiological data on Lassa fever in Nigeria, 2018 – 2021

Proposed title of the dataset: Epidemiological data on Lassa fever in Nigeria, 2018 – 2021

Description of the dataset

The dataset is presented in the SPSS format. The size of the file is 4.5MB. The dataset has been cleaned and all direct identifiers are removed.

Surveillance, Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System (SORMAS), a Nigerian electronic health surveillance database, was used to acquire the data in this dataset. In 2018, the system was deployed for real-time reporting of Lassa fever cases. SORMAS is currently used in all 774 of Nigeria's Local Government Areas (LGA). The LGA Disease Surveillance and Notification Officer (DSNO) enters data on all persons who meet the case definition of Lassa fever who present to health facilities in Nigeria into SORMAS, with data being transmitted in real-time to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) central server for processing. The LGA DSNO also collects samples from all suspected Lassa fever cases and sends them to the State DSNO and State Epidemiologist along with a sample shipment form. The samples are subsequently sent to the nearest public health laboratory in the Lassa fever laboratory network. This network currently has seven laboratories spread across the country's six geopolitical zones, with the seventh being the National Reference Laboratory in Abuja.

Data from laboratory, case management (clinical), and case investigation (epidemiological) forms are included in the Lassa fever dataset. The forms collect demographic data (age, sex, education, residence, occupation), date of admission, hospital name, clinical details (date of symptom onset, symptoms), and exposures (contact with a known or suspected Lassa fever case, being on a contact tracing list, history of travel, direct contact with rodents or rodent faeces and urine, participation in burial activity), among other relevant epidemiological variables