The Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, has called on the Federal Government to redouble its efforts towards alleviating the sufferings and pains of Nigerians, caused by the COVID-19 lockdown.
The NMA also asked the government to carry out mass testing of Nigerians to quicken flattening of the curve of spread of the disease.
President of NMA, Dr Francis Faduyile, who made the call yesterday, said though a national lockdown was necessary to help break the transmission of the highly infectious disease, adequate provision should be made to enable Nigerians stay at home and comply with other measures, such as social distancing.
Faduyile said: “Government needs to find a way to alleviate the pains and difficulties Nigerians are facing. It is good to lockdown because it is what will help slow transmission and it is what the NMA has advocated, but you cannot lockdown when you do not have other issues resolved.
“One of the issues that should be resolved is to get food for the people. You cannot lockdown successfully if there is no food for the people. The government should redouble activities so that the palliative gets round and people can stay indoors and get all the recommendations in place.”
Mass testing to prevent explosion of cases
Asserting that mass screening was necessary to quickly and effectively contain the disease, the NMA boss said: “We need to do mass screening to know the real incidence of the disease, we must not miss it at this time. It might be very difficult for us to take care of Nigerians if we do not get this COVID-19 contained as early as possible and we have a large scale explosion.
“The result coming out in recent days does not show the true prevalence of the COVID-19 within the community. Before now, we have not been doing mass screening, the total number that we screened up till late last week was a little over 5,000. We need to embark on mass screening to know the true incidence of COVID-19 in the country.
‘’If we miss it at this time and cannot quickly get all those that are infected within the community isolated, and we begin to witness unfettered transmission within the community, then we are going to stay a long time before containing the outbreak.”
Treatment of COVID-19 patients in private hospitals
On the treatment of COVID-19 patients in private hospitals, he said NMA was against such private health facilities treating patients.
He said: “As it is, the stand is we don’t feel that private institutions should treat COVID-19. In areas that we have the public institutions treating COVID-19 patients, they have done some administrative engineering control system for them to be able to effectively do so.
“You just don’t treat COVID-19 in any of the General Hospitals, Federal Medical Centres or any teaching hospital, you must produce specialised services to do that and it is on this basis that COVID-19 is highly contagious. It is not just the expertise that matters, you need to put up a lot of stringent controls for you to be able to effectively contain the disease.
‘’Nurses, lab attendants, cleaners, all need to be trained and there must be special means of waste disposal in place. These are things that must be in place before any of the private or public places can be certified to treat COVID-19.’’
He said the aftermath of the death of a highly placed presidency official in a private hospital forced the Lagos State government to declare that it had accredited a private hospital to treat COVID-19 patients after initial denial.
Faduyile added: “This is putting the health system on two different levels. It is understandable that one set of ordinary Nigerians would go to hospital on one system and other Nigerians who are bigger and higher class citizens would go on another. That is unfortunate because if we take our public health system to be very good enough, anybody can go there.”
The NMA President debunked the notion that health workers were insured, saying: “It is not true that any health worker in this country has been given any form of insurance.
‘’There have been some health insurers that have offered to give insurance to health workers but we have not been insured at all. If we are having specialised health workers insured for N1 million or N2 million, it is grossly low for high calibre nurses and other health workers. So, let government come out with what they have and let us know who they have insured.”
Hazard allowance for doctors, others
On hazard allowance for doctors and other health workers, Faduyile said: “For hazard allowance, nobody has discussed with us or called us. What we heard was that they were going to pay N30,000 or N50,000 but they have not given anybody as at today.
‘’Why we are not coming out to shout about money is because we have a pandemic on our hands and we need to take care of Nigerians, but we should not be taken for granted.”
