By Harry Awurumibe, Editor Abuja Bureau
The Director General of Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu has revealed that State Governors on Thursday agreed to strengthen the public health response in their domain while reopening the states economy.
Dr. Ihekweazu who spoke to State House Correspondents after Thursday’s virtual National Executive Council (NEC) presided over by Vice President, Professor Yemi Osibanjo at State House, Abuja, said every member of NEC is committed to doing both the strengthening the public health response and reopening the economy.
He stated that the NEC meeting was an opportunity to brief the Governors on the state of the pandemic in their various states as well as the situation of things across Nigeria.
Dr. Ihekweazu’s statement read in parts: “I started by thanking all the Governors for the incredible work they have been doing in their respective states; investing in health security, investing in, preventing detecting new cases of this new disease that has emerged in our country.
“We agreed on several measures to strengthen the response further; one of this was to set up fixed sample collection sites in all the states; so that going beyond the outbreak response, that there will be fixed sample collection sites where people can go to when they think they have COVID-19, mostly likely within the hospital premises and have access to testing; this is will make it a lot easier for people to walk in and request a test.
“We noted the increase in staff capacity among our healthcare workers on infection prevention and control; the governors were briefed on access to personal protective equipment, reagents commodities and the maintenance of a supply chain to all the states in Nigeria and the governors expressed satisfaction with the work NCDC and the Federal Ministry of Health who have been leading in this regard.
“Of course, we discussed the impact of this epidemic on other healthcare services; at the peak of the outbreak, we saw a reduction to access to other healthcare services—immunisation services, family planning, cancer care, routine health services all went down.
“So, over the last month, we have seen a pick up on this services; we will continue to encourage people to come forward for their health services; doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, lab scientists have all been trained and retrained on how to protect themselves and how to protect their patients.
“We noted a stablising of the pandemic across the country; this is a good sign; but also we noted that with the reopening of the aviation industry, with the reopening of flights, potential and soon reopening of schools, we will likely have a resurgence of case; so, we have to be prepared for this and we have to mitigate the impact of this; we cannot lock the economy down again; so, we have to find a way to strength the use of the measures that we have; and this how will work collaboratively with the states to make sure that we are able to do this together.
“This is no longer going to be government led response; it has to be a response that is led from the bottom-up, from users, from individuals, from organizations in driving the response.
“The Chairman of NEC, the vice president and the Minister of Health who also attended the meeting warned against complacency; we must not look at the curve and think we have come out of this; this virus will remain with us until we have a vaccine and until we have distributed that vaccine across the country; until we get to that situation, we have to keep doing the work that we are doing.
“We all agreed that maintaining health security will remain at the centre of the work at every state; so, every state government agreed that strengthen their states’ epidemiologist teams, strengthen their public health department in order to focus on the response while we reopen the economy.
“So, we have to do both things in parallel; so every member of NEC committed to doing both; one, strengthen the public health response while reopening the economy”, he concluded.
