By Gbadamosi Oladimeji
The Director-General of Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on Thursday, made an outcry over inadequate bed spaces to accommodate COVID-19 patients in isolation centres.
Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu said Lagos State is the worst-hit by the challenge of inadequate bed spaces. Although, Kano State and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) are also affected.
He disclosed this while responding to questions from journalists at the Presidential Task Force briefing on COVID-19 in Abuja.
Ihekweazu stressed that although there are about 3,500-bed spaces available across the country, it is insufficient and leaves the infectious disease control agency to struggle.
“In response to the question about bed spaces, there is no doubt about that, we are struggling in certain places, especially in Lagos. To an extent, Kano and Abuja too, but the biggest challenge right now is in Lagos where bed spaces are really tight.
“Across the country, we have about 3500-bed spaces identified as available for COVID-19 but in Lagos, we are really struggling. So, we are going to keep trying to work with them to make more spaces available and ultimately,” he said.
The NCDC boss added that due to this challenge, there might be a need for a change of strategy; they might start treating some patients at home.
“We might have to change our strategy a little bit and start considering home care in certain circumstances where the person is able to provide a room where a patient can be managed sufficiently, and secondly, we are able to support the care by enabling healthcare workers to come to that.”
Ihekweazu assured that NCDC will always be honest with Nigerians, despite struggling at the moment, the agency might have to adopt that strategy because of the reality they had faced over the last few days and weeks.
As at the time of filing this report, Nigeria currently has 1,728 confirmed cases of COVID-19 across 34 states of the country including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
However, only 307 persons have been discharged while 51 deaths have so far, been recorded.
