A map of Nigeria
—Calls for free test for every citizen
By Johnbosco Agbakwuru
ABUJA- AS workers of all categories resume duty today (Monday), the National Association of Seadogs, NAS, has warned that Nigeria was not yet out of the danger COVID-19 pandemic has foisted on the citizenry.
Briefing journalists on “COVID-19 Awareness and Prevention Project Campaign”, weekend, the NAS President (Capoon), Mr Abiola Owoaje, said that the Organisation was concerned about the lackadaisical attitude by many Nigerians to the COVID-19 threat.
Owoaje noted with dismay that the compulsory wearing of face masks in public places which was one of the guidelines issued by the Nigeria Center for Disease Control, NCDC was being jettisoned, adding that people were no longer maintaining social distancing and washing of hands to curb the spread of the virus.
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He said that NAS, known as Pyrates Confraternity has a moral obligation to educate our fellow citizens that the virus is still very much around and the need to adhere to the COVID-19 health protocols is a collective responsibility.
He said that reports from Europe indicate that France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain were imposing new lockdowns and stringent restrictions guidelines and that the situation is similar in the United Kingdom and the United States.
“Nigerians need to take heed in order to avoid a second wave with the onset of the cold season, which could be disastrous,” he admonished.
He further said, “you would agree with me that compared to other countries in the world, the number of sample tests in Nigeria is abysmally low. For instance, the Department of Health in South Africa has tested 2,632,106 people as at 21st of July out of a population of 57 million.
“Like I had cause to mention in an October 1st video message, our unpreparedness as a country to battle the COVID-19 pandemic mirrors the tragedy that has befallen Nigeria. Not only do we lack the manpower to handle the pandemic, our health facilities are virtually in a complete state of comatose.
“In the quandary that we have found ourselves, our governments have bowed to economic pressure to reopen the economy. We have sunk into false security that Nigeria has flattened the COVID-19 curve, when available facts from under testing to poor health facilities to unreported cases of asymptomatic patients suggests otherwise.
“For the avoidance of doubt, this Press Conference is not to dismiss the efforts put up by the Federal Government, various state governments, the NCDC, private sector and the frontline health workers to combat this pandemic.
“Neither is our COVID-19 Awareness and Prevention Project an attempt to downplay all what has been done to keep this viral infection at bay, rather, as an organisation we are concerned about the unrealistic data being presented by government officials and have decided to keep raising the red flag that Nigeria is not yet out of the danger COVID-19 has foisted on us.
“The objective of this project, which is in three phases with different segments including the Press conference to be addressed shortly by our medical team, is to keep Nigerians at alert on the risk when we lower our guards.
“Other segments of the project, some of which are still ongoing, include dissemination of real-life experiences with COVID-19 through our YouTube channel, an online petition (targeting 100,000 – 150,000 signatories) to hold the Nigerian government accountable to the people through a realistic and transparent official COVID-19 protocol, an online public poll across social media platforms to distill responses to how the Nigeria government is managing the COVID-19 pandemic, distribution of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and Information, Education and Communication(IEC) materials to communities and local health facilities to continue to draw attention to the risk posed by the disease.
“NAS, as an organisation, is concerned about the lackadaisical attitude by many Nigerians to the COVID-19 threat. Compulsory wearing of face masks in public places is being jettisoned, people are no longer maintaining social distancing and washing of hands has become optional.
“We have a moral obligation to educate our fellow citizens that the virus is still very much around and the need to adhere to the COVID-19 health protocols is a collective responsibility.
“Reports from Europe indicate that France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain are imposing new lockdowns and stringent restrictions guidelines. The situation is similar in the United Kingdom and the United States. Nigerians need to take heed in order to avoid a second wave with the onset of the cold season, which could be disastrous.
“We are optimistic that at the end of our campaign, we would be able to engage relevant stakeholders and seek an improvement in our healthcare system. We seek your cooperation as strategic partners towards the realisation of this objective.”
In a presentation titled,” COVID-19 management and the Nigerian health system strategic preparedness and response for epidemics”, the organization’s head of medical team, Dr. Charles Meribole lamented that the awareness campaign on the virus was not seen any more.
He lamented that there was no aggressive test in Nigeria as was the case in other countries, stressing that “without conducting tests you cannot get data for positive tests for covid 19 infections so the flattening of the curve is deceptive.
“Without tests how would you account for death from covid 19 in a 200 million population???
The figures are more in Lagos state and lowest in Kogi state. There are over 86 laboratory with COVID 19 testing capability and 69 of these laboratories are government-owned while 17 laboratories are private/fee-paying laboratories.”
He also said, ” A cursory look at the global figures is frightening while the Nigeria stats are to say the least, deceptive and unacceptable, as barely half a million (0.27%) out of the population of 200 million have been tested.
“Lagos state mounted the most strategic and pragmatic response in terms of case definition, tracing, testing and isolation hence accounts for a higher fraction of the numbers while state like Kogi and Cross River state whose government publicly denied the existence of Covid 19, systematically refused testing, isolation and treatment have seemingly “lower figures”
“Furthermore, there is paucity of widespread community testing, contact tracing and unmatched response by the global governments to the pandemic and this is more pronounced in Nigeria.
” WHO classified Nigeria as the 13th high risk African country with respect to spread and amongst the vulnerable African nations, given the weak state of the healthcare system in terms of availability, access, manpower, skilled set and tools/resources to deliver basic care.
“In Nigeria, with 4% of the nation’s budget in 2020 allocated to health, the challenges are not limited to under testing, inadequate spread/ numbers of testing laboratories, poorly prepared healthcare facility and insufficient personnel, lack of case management and infection prevention skill sets, inadequate palliatives and economic stimuli to both the families and businesses.
“With the primary health care system comatose, It is no news that the healthcare workers (HCW) in the secondary and tertiary tier are working under challenging situation and exposed greatly with little or no PPE, not well researched locally adapted screening and management protocol.
“It is on Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) records that over 2175 HCW are infected compared with a little above 100 in Ghana.
Also about 40 HCW have died from the infection. There is also industrial-action-induced-response from the FGN in part payment of only three months health hazard allowances (50% of their basic salary).
“Also there are no clear cut directives on the life insurance policy for healthcare workers nor sufficient supply of much needed resources to healthcare facilities nation-wide despite tangible support from the WHO, private and cooperate collaboration groups.
Apart from a few states like Lagos and the FCT, most isolation centres remains a monument from knee jerk response from the state with no intention to make them function.”
On Nigeria’s response to mitigate impact of covid 19, he said,” The major response to COVID infection apart from funding and case management was the nation’s total lock down with its attendant effect on the sustenance of the high percentage of Nigerian in the informal sector.
” There was a tremendous response to mitigate this difficulty by the FGN through huge funds voted towards and guidelines looking at best practice all over the world. -the Presidential Task Force (PTF)-NCDC empowerment, -procurement of equipment’s, medications, trainings, setting up laboratories, awareness campaign, and PPE.
“Also, palliatives like the school feeding programme even while schools are closed, stimuli to small and medium businesses stimuli, 20,000 distributed to the Nigerian poor homes by Humanitarian affairs minister. We saw the NDDC case of staff appropriating millions to themselves and currently the survival funds platform open to Nigerians.
“Furthermore, commendable support from the World Bank, individuals, private and cooperate bodies collaboration to support states in implementing incident action plan is yet to be translated to concrete outputs.
” The average Nigerian and the international community will want to know how these monies are accounted for and efforts made to hold persons, agencies, and departments accountable.”
The NAS Medical Pyrates said that the national Information management system in conjunction with the nascent PTF and NCDC has made great effort to sensitize the population about the reality of COVID infection and the rising trend in incidence.
” Also sent out were information on the infection prevention protocol, encouraging testing and reporting the states and national numbers on daily basis. This can be seen on the NCDC website however what is the reality on ground.
” This effort has not yielded the much-desired goal as some state governments have thwarted this effort with orchestrated denials and lack of or facelift response.
Many Nigerians do not believe that the infection exist as many can be seen going about their business without observing social distancing nor using face mask and applying hand sanitizers.
“Where they do the mask are worn on the jaw to gain access to gated facilities. One begins to wonder if Nigerians are already immune to covid 19? with no clinical evidence.
” The ‘elites’ inclusive of government officials did not provide the needed good example in their conduct and utterances.
” The generation and spread of fear from stigmatization, offering of cures with no clinical evidence, and the dismissal of medical advice based on belief systems esp when these misleading messages are endorsed by influential people has resulted in the low presentations of people with symptoms and late presentations.
“Such irresponsible conduct by the elites and utterance further made the disbelief gain momentum. Examples of such instances of poor examples from the ‘elites’ include the poor handling of burial and management of gatherings even churches. We have seen some leaders saying that covid 19 does not exist.”
He said Seadogs, as part of her corporate social responsibility has leveraged on the vast human resources in the healthcare industry both onshore and offshore to contribute our quota to the Nigerian course.
” Corona virus disease has come to stay, life cannot be the same again even as we gradually ease off the lockdown and open the economy and global travel.
” Each nation must adapt to these changes and the world must learn to deploy a concerted global response to pandemic to have a greater global impact.
” For Nigeria, it is Instructive to closely observe that, COVID 19 travel ban, has proven that the elitist in Nigeria can also be treated in our poorly equipped centres without resorting to medical tourism offshores (UK, USA, Dubai and India). Hence the critical need to resuscitate our healthcare system and fill in the gaps geared up for global cha
