By Kayode Idowu, Maiduguri
Medical practitioners in Borno State have asked for easy access to medical facilities.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, the Chief Medical Director of University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH), Dr. Ahmed Ahidjo said the security officials enforcing the lockdown in the state should know that hospitals are not closed and medical practitioners are on essential duty and soon be allowed to move freely.
He said UMTH is a big hospital that apart from attending to cases of COVID-19, has the responsibility of attending to health emergencies.
Ahidjo lamented that many of the staff on duty were denied passage as the security officials demanded for pass from the state government.
He lamented that the pass given to the hospital was grossly inadequate and something needed to be done so that health workers are not stopped from getting to their duty post.
Also speaking in the same vein, the Borno State Chairman of the Nigeria Medical Association, Prof. Aliyu Kodiya said: “The lockdown is now fully enforced but health workers can only get to the hospital through designated buses which we feel is not right.
“We should be allowed to use our staff ID cards and our personal cars so as to observe the social and physical distancing.”
He lamented that: “Of the confirmed cases in Borno state, 60% or more are health workers, it is therefore not right to carry susceptible individuals in an environment that social distancing is nearly impossible. We have warned our members to handle every patient with caution and observe universal precautions. We have also requested that government and organizations should provide all necessary protective gears. It has been very difficult as union leaders now to monitor what is going on since the lockdown because we do not have the special tags.”
He decried that: “We rely on information from our colleagues who are out there, so far the major issue has been lack of adequate PPEs in many health facilities.”
On his part, the Borno State Chairman of Medical And Health Workers Union Of Nigeria, Yusuf Inuwa, asked that medical practitioners should be assisted to do a great job with minimal risk.