Lassa fever killed 118 people in Nigeria in the first three months of this year, the West African country's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) said.

The virus, which is carried by rodents and was first recognised in 1969 in the northeastern state of Borno, has killed thousands of people over the years, especially in rural areas, due to unsanitary handling of food.

Despite years of campaigning on how to prevent the disease, there have been no significant improvements in the environmental hygiene of impoverished rural Nigerians that could prevent rats from accessing homes, food and utensils.

In the January-March period, a total of 645 Lassa fever cases were confirmed with 118 deaths, a fatality rate of 18.3%, NCDC director general Jide Idris said in a statement on Monday.

Nigeria has been recording around 100 deaths from Lassa fever every quarter recently.

Among the latest cases, Idris said, more than 20 health workers had been infected with Lassa fever in five of the 33 affected states of the country.

He said treatment centres were suffering staffing shortages while many patients were delaying seeking medical care in favour of self-medication and other unorthodox practices that were mostly ineffective.