Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris
Afraid of contracting the Ebola virus, health workers at the
Yaba Mainland Hospital, Lagos have been running away from patients isolated in
the hospital, thus putting intense pressure on the few ones still treating
victims.
Impeccable sources at the hospital told Saturday PUNCH that health
workers in the hospital were also being pressured by family members to resign
their appointments with the establishment.
Some of them are already avoiding the patients like a
plague. As a result of this development, hospital sources said the few health
workers available have been working for 24 hours in order to take care of
patients in the isolated area.
Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris, told
some of our correspondents in Lagos on Wednesday that people in the isolation
ward could die if they were not well managed, adding that government needed
more hands.
Identifying lack of adequate health officials as a major
challenge to containing the spread of the virus, he said, “Because of the fear
of Ebola, everybody seems to be scared, nobody wants to assist, which is a
major challenge.
“It is even more so for the treatment isolation ward. It’s a
major problem because a lot of people ran away, especially when the nurse
died.”
One of the senior medical practitioners in the hospital
confided in one of our correspondents that his family members who currently
reside abroad had been putting pressure on him to resign his appointment to
prevent him from contracting the deadly virus.
He also said that the doctors’ strike had been putting
pressure on the available personnel to work more than the mandatory eight
hours.
He said, “The pressure is too much for us; we have been
working for 24 hours instead of the statutory eight hours because of inadequate
manpower as a result of the ongoing doctors’ strike and other health workers
that have been reluctant to move near the patients.”
He said, “We have been relying on volunteers who have been
helping us to carry out some of our responsibilities here. Our family members
too have been panicking and putting pressure on us as a result of our
insistence to continue to manage the carriers of Ebola virus; they are nursing
the fear that we may contract the disease as many of them have insisted that we
resign our appointments.
“One major aspect of the issue is the stigmatisation. Our
neighbours have also been stigmatising us; they believe that because of the
fact that Ebola patients are being managed here, they think we might have
contracted the virus.”
He said the efforts to prevent the spread would have been
completely defeated if not for some volunteers who had been assisting in
managing those infected with the Ebola virus.
The senior health worker, who likened the challenge to a war
situation in which reserved soldiers were mobilised to participate in fierce
battle, said that it would require effective and co-ordinated effort to manage
the patients as well as prevent the spread of the virus.
The senior health worker, however, recalled that some
hospitals had been misdiagnosing patients suffering from severe malarial as
contracting Ebola virus.
He particularly mentioned the case of a malarial patient who
was referred to the Mainland Hospital by another hospital on the suspicion that
he had contracted the Ebola virus.
He said, “Immediately the malaria patient was brought here
on the suspicion that he had contracted Ebola virus, we treated him for three
hours after which he requested for eba (Garri). The following day, the boy ate
rice and plantain before we discharged him.”
Though he said the Lagos State Government had provided every
necessary support to prevent the outbreak of the virus, one of our
correspondents noticed that water was still a major problem at the Mainland
Hospital as some junior workers were seen during a visit to the hospital
carrying buckets filled with water from one location to another.
The workers were also seen wearing protective face masks.
The Lagos State chapter of the Nigerian Medical Association
and the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives, last Sunday,
accused the Federal Government of not being proactive enough in the fight
against the virus.
They said the government had yet to put in place adequate
measures to protect health workers willing to manage those infected.
The state NMA Chairman, Dr. Tope Ojo, asked the federal and
Lagos State governments to provide protective kits and address the issue of
hazard allowance for doctors, nurses and other health workers willing to be
involved in treating infected persons.
He had said, “You don’t just dangle life insurance without
documents. We cannot endanger our lives unless we know what is at stake. We
should be assured that should anything happen to us, our families are catered
for.”
The NMA Secretary-General, Dr. Adewunmi Alayaki, in an
interview with Saturday PUNCH in Abuja on Wednesday, expressed concern about
the delay in releasing details of the insurance policy the Federal Government
health workers treating Ebola patients.
Alayaki said, “Government has promised to insure health
workers taking care of the patients, but details have not been released. We are
expecting details of the policy.”
Alayaki spoke just as residents of Kuje, a satellite town in
Abuja, reiterated their opposition to the siting of Ebola treatment centre in
the community.
Some youths have threatened to burn the centre if it is
located in the community.
Assessing efforts to check the spread of the disease,
Alayaki hailed the Federal and Lagos State governments, but asked them to
ensure that doctors and other health workers treating Ebola patients were well
protected.
A Sierra Leonean doctor, Sheik Umar Khan, was reported to
have died, after contracting the disease, despite wearing a protective gear
while treating Ebola patients.
The World Health Organisation recommends the use of personal
protective equipment by health workers and caregivers attending to Ebola
patients.
The disease can be transmitted through contact with blood
and body fluids of infected individuals and with objects contaminated with the
fluids.
Meanwhile, there is panic in Kuje following the decision of
the government to manage Ebola patients at the Kuje General Hospital.
The Federal Capital Territory Administration had on Monday
designated the male ward of the hospital as the isolation centre to manage
Ebola cases in the city.
It also set up a technical committee on Ebola management
headed by the FCTA Secretary for Health and Human Services, Dr. Demola
Onakomaiya.
Investigations, however, indicated that health workers in
the hospital feared that managing Ebola cases in the facility might expose them
to the virus.
It was learnt that some youths had threatened to burn the facility,
if the FCTA transferred Ebola patients to Kuje General Hospital.
Residents of the town, who spoke with one of our
correspondents, described the decision to use the male ward of the hospital to
manage Ebola patients as heartless.
Meanwhile, Oyo State has instituted 24-hour surveillance
monitoring and tracking of suspected cases in all the 33 local government areas
of the state.
The Commissioner for Health, Dr. Muyiwa Gbadegesin, said
emphasis had been placed on the border regions of Saki West, Iwajowa, Atisbo
and Itesiwaju council areas to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus into the
state.
Pandemonium broke out last Sunday at Udo community in Ovia
South-West Local Government Area of Edo State when a man suddenly slumped and
died creating panic among residents that the man might have died of the Ebola
virus disease.
But the state Commissioner for Information and Orientation,
Mr. Louis Odion, said in a statement made available to journalists that
examined samples from the man’s body showed that he died as a result of
bleeding from peptic ulcer.
Odion said, “Specimens were taken from the body and taken to
the Irrua Specialist Hospital.
“However, preliminary examinations revealed that the
deceased died of bleeding from peptic ulcer.”
Despite the porous borders in Ogun State, the government has
yet to be fully prepared for the prevention of the deadly virus as of the time
of filing this report.
Isolation centres have yet to be identified. The
Commissioner for Health, Dr. Olaokun Soyinka, told journalists during a press
briefing on Ebola that the state was being careful in revealing the centres.
The protective equipment have yet to be deployed to health
facilities, though they were said to have been delivered on Wednesday to the
Permanent secretary, Ministry of Health, Dr. Daisi Odeniyi.
Reacting to the preventive measures put in place by the
government, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health, Odeniyi, in an
electronic message sent to our correspondent on Wednesday, stated that the
personal protection equipment had been procured by the government.
But the Ekiti State Government set up a 30-man
multi-ministerial committee as part of efforts at preventing as well as
ensuring prompt diagnosis and management of possible identified cases of Ebola.
The committee raised by the Commissioner for Health, Prof.
Olusola Fasubaa, comprises members from different relevant sectors.
Findings revealed that selected wards in three General
Hospitals have been set up across the three senatorial districts in Ode, Ifaki
and Okemesi. The state intends to screen corpses before being admitted into
mortuaries.
But independent investigations revealed that standard
personal protective equipment for health workers are still not available.
The state has also not met a request from the Nigerian
Medical Association for the establishment of a centralised isolated camp for
Ebola instead of designated wards in selected hospitals.
The state chairman of NMA, Dr. John Akinbote, in an
interview with one of our correspondents, expressed dissatisfaction over the
issue.
He said, “The appropriate standard personal protective
equipment for health workers are not in Ekiti State.
“We need designated camps not hospital wards because this is
a highly contagious disease.
“The camp will be burnt after eradicating the disease so
that people will not have anything to do with it again. By the time you start
using hospital wards, people will not want to go there for treatment of other
ailments because of stigma.”
Akinbote, however, vowed that no doctor in the state would
be allowed to risk his life by managing Ebola patients when the required
equipment are not on ground.
The Kwara State Government has also taken a proactive
measure by establishing Rapid Response and Emergency Preparedness committees as
one of the strategies to check the spread of the virus.
The state Commissioner for Health, Alhaji Kayode Issah, said
the committees had offices in all the local government areas of the state and
were coordinated by the Disease Surveillance and Notification Officers.
Though there have not been reported cases of the virus in
Kogi State, the government has designated the Specialist Hospital in Lokoja as
an isolation centre in case of likely outbreak of the disease.
The Commissioner for Information, Hajia Zainab Okino, said
the government took the step as a proactive strategy to prevent the disease.
President Goodluck Jonathan last week summoned a
stakeholders’ emergency meeting on the virus after which he approved N1.9bn to
implement a Special Intervention Plan aimed at curtailing further spread of the
virus.
The money, according to the President, is to further
strengthen ongoing steps to contain the virus such as the establishment of
additional isolation centres, case management, contact tracing, deployment of
additional personnel and screening.
Jonathan, however, asked school owners across the country to
consider extending the current holiday until the Federal Government would have
carried out a reassessment of the level of the threat posed by the virus.
Also asking religious organisations to discourage gatherings
that may increase the spread of the virus, the President asked that movement of
corpses from one community to the other or from overseas into Nigeria should be
stopped forthwith.
He directed the Ministry of Health to work in collaboration
with state Ministries of Health, the National Centre for Disease Control, the
National Emergency Management Agency and other relevant agencies to ensure that
all possible steps are taken to effectively contain the threat of the Ebola
virus in line with international protocols and best practices.
Also during the week, the President summoned the 36 state
governors and their health commissioners to an urgent meeting to hold on
Wednesday over the outbreak of the Ebola virus in the country.
He stated this at a conference organised by the Interfaith
Initiative For Peace in Abuja early in the week shortly after the Minister of
Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, said that Nigeria had recorded the 10th Ebola
case.
The case involves a nurse who is one of the health workers
that managed Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American in a Lagos hospital that
brought the virus to Nigeria on July 20. Sawyer died on July 25.
Punch
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