The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) on Thursday called for urgent proactive measures to curb the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) in the country.
NMA President, Dr Fancis Faduyile, who made the call while appearing on Channels Television programme, believes Nigeria cannot take the chance of getting overwhelmed with the present condition of its health sector.
He said, “Nigeria, we must know, is not a very rich country; her patients are not very capable of getting all the necessary payment for health and the health system is weak.”
“We cannot afford to get overwhelmed before we will start asking for whatever can be done for us to identify people who are positive, and for us to be able to quickly isolate them.
“The more we keep them in the community, the higher the risk of them infecting other members.”
Faduyile further revealed that the NMA was working with other medical bodies to validate some of the mass screening kits for COVID-19 and would advise government to embark on mass screening of Nigerians as soon as it is established that some of the validated kits give fairly accurate results.
According to him, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has yet to approve any kit to test for COVID-19, so every country has a way of developing home-grown methods to resolve its challenges.
He said, “Nowadays, we are having patients who are coming to the hospital and are not given adequate treatment because attending physicians are not sure of the status of the patients.
“This is where the mass screening test will come in and can help in resolving some of the issues that we are facing generally.”
“It is important for us to stress that it is the testing that will help in the containment of this COVID-19 infection because until we test a large number of Nigerians and those who are positive are identified and possibly isolated, it is at that time that we know that we are going in the right direction to be able to stop the spread of COVID-19,” he stated.
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