Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
Federal Government has disclosed that no private facility has been accredited in the country at the moment for the treatment of coronavirus (COVID-19).
This is even as it said that Chinese medical experience in the country to support the coronavirus fight, are still observing the 14-day quarantine but engaging via teleconferencing with officials and partners of the ministry.
The Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, made this disclosure known in Abuja, during the briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.
Speaking more on why there are no private hospitals accreditation criteria yet, the minister said: “Lagos is looking at some hospitals for treating coronavirus. Private hospitals must show that they have the staff – doctors and nurses that must be infectious disease specialists and are trained in infection and control protocols. The hospital must also have cleaners who are trained.
“The hospital must also be properly delineated as it is in clean and not dirty areas. There is no hospital that I know that has met the criteria in the country at the moment.
“Treating of private patients is not allowed because the risk is very high. If the treatment of patients gets complicated, before you rushed them to the hospital, it will be too late for the person. So, the earlier they begin their treatment in an accredited and certified hospital the better it is.”
On what the Chinese medical team have been up to since their arrival, Ehanire said they were still observing the 14-day quarantine.
He said: “The Chinese team are still in quarantine for 14 days but our directors, officials and technical partners in the ministry have had a teleconference with them, in which they exchanged ideas and were able to learn a lot of things about how they handled their cases, patients and how they carried out their infection prevention.
“The shipment that came in through the United Nations system and the one that came from China were decontaminated as a routine process. They have both been decontaminated by the same process by the Ministry of Environment.”
With regard to claims of finding the cure to the coronavirus by traditional medicine practitioners, Ehanire explained that he will not dispute their claims, but has left it to the department for traditional alternative and complementary medicines in the Ministry of Health to handle.
“We have had a series of letters from traditional medical practitioners that have written to me that they have the cure for coronavirus. I have not disputed it, so I have referred such letters to the department of traditional medicine and I’m waiting for them to give me feedback on what they have discovered from the people,” he said.
On why there haven’t been any recorded case of the virus in states like Abia and Imo, the Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, said: “We have decided to re-intensify our surveillance in Imo and Abia states to be sure that we are not missing out on any patient. We don’t know why they haven’t recorded any case, but it definitely means we have to work harder and state teams have to work harder in those states.”
He explained that the centre has plans to completely decentralise testing for COVID-19, thereby improving turnaround time by fifty per cent in all states in the country.
Also, with the addition of two private testing laboratories in Kano, Lagos, and new testing modalities using HIV, Tuberculosis modular laboratories, the NCDC will rapidly scale up testing capacities across the country.
The DG of NCDC said: “I know that it might appear that we have been slow to get testing scaled up, but anyone that has followed discussions about this disease around the world will know that we are not the only country that has struggled with initiating mass testing in their settings.
“We have quietly put our heads down, worked with our partners, developed our strategies, made our plans, and now we are ready to scale up testing in Nigeria. We aim to increase access to testing, as new testing modalities become available.
“The success of this strategy is dependent on our ability to leverage existing infrastructures not only for testing but also to rapidly include testing modes that were available through other disease programmes.
“There are basically five aspects to it, first, is to expand our existing laboratory network. Second, is to use labs that were previously used for HIV testing. Yesterday we got our first consignment of reagents for those tests, for the HIV molecular testing labs. We will be trying it out at the National Reference Lab and then scale up very rapidly.
“The third strategy is to use the point of care tuberculosis testing, generally called GeneXpert. There are 400 of them across the country but not all of them are ready. We have 41 that are now ready to be used for COVID-19 testing.
“It is not that the equipment is bad, it is just that they require a certain level of bio-safety. There has to be a functional bio-safety cabinet. We will start with the 41 and scale from there. We expect the reagents for the GeneXpert machines to come in by next week, and that will enable us again to scale testing.
“Our plan is to decentralise testing completely and improve the turnaround time at state levels by 50 per cent. Our final strategy is to engage the private sector.”
Ihekweazu added: “Last week, we brought in the first private sector lab into our network – a lab called DNA labs in Kaduna. We are at the verge of bringing in a second lab in Lagos to join our testing network. These labs have undergone very rigid required quality assurance process that they need to in order to join efforts as delicate as this.
“It is not really our priority now to accredit private labs but we have started. Where it is necessary like in Kaduna at the moment where there is no other public sector lab that was ready, we did accredit the private sector lab.
“In Lagos, it was also needed because we just needed to rapidly scale capacity. Our short-term goal is to scale in the public sector. So far, all the reagents used for COVID-19 testing are being supplied through our procurement centrally. So, once the private sector is able to first have a facility that is ready to test, and secondly is able to procure its own reagents, then, of course, that whole space will open up.
“Our plan is to restructure the way we carry out infectious disease diagnosis in Nigeria. To move from a disease-specific approach where every disease has its own laboratory system to a platform approach. So, every lab that we commission now we’ll be ready to do testing for HIV, TB, influenza, monkey pox and of course COVID-19.
“COVID-19 has brought out the essence and importance of preparedness and we will use these to create a future that will not only serve us through this outbreak, but also for any other outbreaks that we might face.”