The Chairman of the Kogi State branch of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Dr Kabir Zubair has said that testing for the Coronavirus disease remains a challenge in the state.
The state NMA chairman stated this on Thursday, in a reaction to the report by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), that only one testing sample has so far been sent in for checking by Kogi. The test result returned negative.
He stated that the challenge had led to agitation from members of the Association of Resident Doctors (ARD), being that they are in the first line to attend to suspected cases, a number of which cases have been received at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Lokoja, in recent times.
According to him: โAlthough, no confirmed case has been reported in Kogi State, till date, but a number of suspected cases have been attended to at FMC Lokoja, and members of the ARD are among the first to attend to these patients, and as such, they might be exposed to the highly contagious COVID-19.
โARD is an affiliate of the Nigeria Medical Association, and they are among the most exposed healthcare workers to patients with suspected COVID-19 in the hospital settings.
โThe NMA is aware that they have become agitated and apprehensive in the last few months, due to community spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria.โ
He said that the FMC Lokoja is the only functional tertiary health institution in Kogi State, and as such, the institution attends to a wide range of patients, and the ever present danger of being exposed to patients with COVID-19 is major source of worry.
โAs a clinician, standard practice demands that the moment you have clinical suspicion of an infectious diseases, the ideal thing is to carryout laboratory confirmation.
โCOVID-19 is a highly contagious infectious disease, responsible for the ongoing global pandemic. In Nigeria, new cases are reported daily and community spread is accelerating. This is the reason why members of ARD are agitated as testing for COVID-19 has remained a challenge in the state,โ he added.
