COVID-19: Don calls for involvement of more professionals, increase in testing
COVID-19: Don calls for involvement of more professionals, increase in testing
Tests
By Ijendu Iheaka
Aba (Abia) April 16, 2020 (NAN) A lecturer in Abia State University, Uturu, Dr Okezie Okamgba, has urged the Federal Government to urgently increase the nation’s coronavirus testing capacity to enable early reopening of the country and return to normal life.
He told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Aba on Thursday that this should be done through procurement of more Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) Machines and test kits to reduce possibility of endless lockdowns with attendant starvation of the poor.
Okamgba, a lecturer at the Department of Medical Laboratory Science, Abia State University, solicited the involvement of more professionals and deployment of more testing machines and kits.
He said this would help to increase testing capacity and reduce number of lockdown days with its effects on government and individuals.
Okamgba said that with rising reported cases of starvation of the poor in Nigeria following the lockdowns, the poor, hungry population which lockdowns also exposed to malnutrition would record more Covid-19’s fatalities if hit by it.
“Hunger results in malnutrition and that goes a long way to reduce human immunity and helps any disease itself to invade the body massively.
“This problem of hunger that we appear to be creating for failing to act in the needed direction will help the coronavirus disease to invade people massively and quickly too.
“With hunger, we will be endangering the lives of our people the more but because Nigeria cannot in this circumstance track all its poor now, it needs to take a different urgent route to cut endless lockdown with its attendant hunger,” he said.
The don said that it would be useless spending all the donations made by private individuals and corporate bodies in Nigeria for Covid-19 management only on items that would not scale up testing capacity.
Okamgba said that increasing Nigeria’s coronavirus testing capacity holds the magic to treating infected persons, reducing rates of infection, cutting lockdown days and increasing the possibility of early reopening of the nation.
“If government wants to get it right, they should use part of the Covid-19 donations to quickly procure more PCR machines and test kits.
“When procured and shared across states, it will rapidly increase Covid-19 tests nationwide, and across all sections of our society.
“It will also reveal persons with the disease and enable their treatment, which will reduce the spread of the disease, cut down on length of lockdowns and quickly reopen our society.
“If this is not done quickly, the money donated will not solve the problems the country might enter if it fails to act fast because looking at the number of confirmed cases today, you can see that there is no time to waste anymore,” he said.
He praised the government for developing a set of health protocols for the management and avoidance of the infection but added that working on the protocols alone would not save the country.
Okamgba advised government to reduce threats to the health of persons close to a recovered Covid-19 patient by looking into research reports showing the virus could live in the intestine for 6 weeks and be passed through stool.
Okamgba, however, insisted that Nigeria’s borders should remain closed and its politicians and upwardly-mobile citizens made to stay in one place to cut down the spread of the virus.
He also urged the government to use this opportunity of Covid-19 infections to map out funds to improve the nation’s healthcare systems as part of Covid-19 recovery plan for the good of all.(NAN)
IEI/DE/AFA
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Edited by Dorcas Jonah/Felix Ajide