Jacob A Dunga, Alkali Mohammed, Nura H Alkali, Abubakar A Gombe, Yusuf B Jibrin, Sabiyu A Gwalabe, Jafiada J Musa, Mustapha S Umar, Suleiman Y Yusuf, Aishatu Bello, Binta Lassan
Background: Nigeria suffered waves of Highly Pathog enic Avian Influenza (HPAI) outbreaks that peaked twice in February 2006 and February 2007. The outbr eaks affected 3,057 commercial and rural household farms causing 1.3 million of the country’ s poultry destroyed. The burden of Influenza is likely to be under estimated and because of the uns table nature of the virus it call for the mapping o f this virus to specific region, this study therefore seeks to identify the types, prevalence, strain, predilection of the organism so as to monitor the o ccurrence of influenza in this part of the country with the aim of providing a base line level of intervent ion of influenza virus and find the candidate virus for vaccine selection and production. This study is a c ross sectional survey, our target populations were all pediatric and adult patients admitted at the pe diatrics and internal medicine department of ATBUTH who has met the criteria for presence of cough, fev er (>37 o C), nasal congestion and dyspnoea. Samples were collected and analyzed using the polym erase chain reaction (PCR), for the presence and sub typing of influenza viruses in respiratory spec imens. Overall 5% of the samples collected tested positive for human influenza type A and B. During a verage epidemics, overall attack rates are estimate d to be 10–20%, but in certain susceptible population s such as schoolchildren or nursing home residents, attack rates of 40–50% may occur. 60% of the positi ve results were among the female samples where as 40% from the male samples
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