Posted on: Sun 17-05-2020

The Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, on Friday said the epidemic situation in Kano had stabilised, attributing this to the good relationship between the visiting federal task team and Kano state task force on Covid-19.

 

Ehanire said this at the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 daily press briefing in Abuja

 

He said that “one manifestation of this being the high number of new cases recorded daily from the fact that all labs in Kano are now functioning and clearing the sample backlog, with over 350 tests done daily.”

 

He said the state government had been doing well in opening up more treatment and isolation centres. Ehinare said a strategy document of National Primary Health Care Development Agency was being developed and repurposed for application to Kano.

 

He said it was also applicable to similar high density, high burden metropolis such as Lagos to respond more specifically to the challenges of Covid-19 tracing, tracking, testing, isolation and treatment in congested communities.

 

According to him, an innovation of the FMoH Kano task team is the training of journalists on Saturday, aimed at ensuring reporters are in a better position to interpret Covid-19 related data and information. He said further that it would also help them to learn to take necessary infection prevention measures.

 

Ehinare commended Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje for providing necessary support for the federal team to function.

 

The minister stated that a Federal Ministry of Health team had been assembled to proceed to Sokoto and Borno on fact finding and support missions to engage with state authorities and determine material and technical needs.

 

He said that the most immediate probability is the prioritisation of these states for the deployment of repurposed Gene-Xpert machines as soon as it started to receive the cartridges in a few weeks to bring speed to testing. In his address, the director-general of Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, who spoke on the New Normal Masks, Hygiene and Distancing, highlighted the need for the proper use of face masks in limiting spread of Covid-19.

 

“Face masks are an additional layer of protection and should never be reused or shared with others,” he said. Meanwhile, the national coordinator, PTF, Dr. Sani Aliyu, while speaking on the need to avoid stigmatising patients, said stigmatisation undermines every effort to contain and defeat the pandemic. NAN

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