The Interview Editors
The North East Youth Stakeholders Forum has raised concerns over it calls the marginalisation of northern Nigeria on the location of the COVID-19 testing laboratories by the federal government.
The forum in a statement in Maiduguri signed by its spokesman, Comrade Shettima Umar, said the development was disturbing and needed to be addressed urgently.
“Experts across the globe have state clearly that there is nothing which is as important in curtailing transmission of COVID-19 like increasing testing capacity, in fact increasing testing capacity is much more important than increasing number of mechanical ventilators or hospital Beds as far as COVID-19 is a concern, and this is why World Health Organisation is holding on to the slogan of ‘testing.
“Objectively, there is a seeming marginalisation of testing centres in the North. There are 22 Federal Teaching Hospitals in Nigeria, seven of these 22 Teaching Hospitals are in the Northern Nigeria, and the Northern Nigeria also has several Federal Medical centres. 70 per cent of the Teaching Hospitals in Nigeria has virology laboratories that has been fully neglected by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
“Recently, NCDC released a map showing six molecular laboratory network in the country, and sadly enough there is no single testing laboratory in the whole of the North.
“We all know that the Northern Nigeria is a region with dense population which should be a pointer to the fact that we are in dire need of a fully equipped and functional testing facilities across the North to quickly cut off local transmission.
“We are in the know of how fast this COVID-19 spreads, and irrespective of our location of residence we all come in contact with one another in one way or the other.”
The also noted that some people were asymptomatic, and might not necessarily know they are COVID-19 positive until they are tested, and wonder how can such people be tested if they have no access to the testing laboratory.
“The prime mission of NCDC is ‘To protect the health of Nigerians through evidence prevention, integrated disease surveillance and response activities, using a one health approach, guided by research and led by a skilled workforce’, and the Northern Nigeria should not be left out of the missions of the NCDC.”
The group said it was not satisfied with the explanation and three-week timetable announced by the authorities of NCDC to set up laboratories in the north and called for more urgent steps.
“It is with this regards that we called on the director general of NCDC in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health to, as a matter of urgency do all they can towards ensuring that some laboratories should be selected for testing in Northern Nigeria in order to suppress the spread of this pandemic,” the spokesman stated.
