The Anambra Ministry of Health, on Friday, organised a training for health personnel in faith-based hospitals on proper case management of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Commissioner for Health, Dr Vincent Okpala, while declaring the workshop open, said that the training was to equip health workers with the requisite knowledge on ways to contain the virus in the state.
According to him, government has mapped out the state’s COVID-19 Chain of Survival Strategy to ensure early intervention in handling the virus.
The commissioner said “there is need for health personnel to step up their level of suspicion and identification of COVID-19 symptoms, which is the primary course of treatment and containment of the disease.
“That is why the government is training personnel to pass on the chain of survival strategy to all hospitals in the state.
“The training is necessary for prevention and care. It will enable the workers to understand safety measures, standard precaution and transmission-based precaution.
“This is part of government’s efforts to ensure the state remained safe from the dreaded coronavirus.”
Okpala added that the State COVID-19 Chain of Survival Strategies were COVID-19 compliant.
He noted that early diagnosis and initiation of treatment by healthcare personnel, as well as early initiation of contact
tracing, early notification of results and initiation of treatment were highly vital.
“We discovered that early recognition of symptoms was extremely important and if followed religiously, there would be no mortality rate.
“We have advised healthcare personnel to treat all symptoms of malaria at this point as COVID-19 , until proven otherwise and this has helped
people to survive.”
Dr Kenneth Nwokolo, the Head, Infection Prevention and Control, highlighted critical emerging issues in COVID-19 prevention, management
and control.
He said “if the war against COVID-19 must be won, medical personnel must be one step ahead in the management and control of the disease.”
(NAN)
