Lassa fever surveillance across three states

The teaching hospital and the state health services have been working to one case definition since the start of the year, with confirmations reported through a single line rather than through each facility's own channel.

The measure this was meant to move is the interval between a patient presenting at any of the participating facilities and a laboratory confirmation reaching the treating clinician. It has fallen, and it has fallen furthest at the facilities that were slowest before — which is the result a shared definition should produce and is not the result a new laboratory would have produced.

The remaining delay is concentrated in transport between the outlying facilities and the laboratory, and no amount of definitional work will shorten it. That is the subject of the next phase.