An underground medical city, offering illicit treatment for the rich infected with coronavirus in Kano, is threatening the state government’s efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.
Two medical doctors, one a Nigerian from a neighbouring state and the other a naturalized Nigerian of Middle Eastern origin, both without training or experience in treating infectious diseases, are at the heart of this irregular practice.
Two popular hospitals in the ancient city have also been fingered in this practice that could send the number of coronavirus patients in Kano to the roof.
Like Lagos, the rich could be at the centre of the spread of the deadly virus in Kano, according KaftanPost investigation.
Our reporter investigates how the unsavoury and somewhat unwittingly self destructive role of unorthodox treatment of VIPs in private clinics worsens the spread of COVID-19 to family, friends, medics and strangers alike.
The index coronavirus case in Kano was first treated at a private clinic along Lamido crescent at the Nassarawa GRA. It was a true big-man, a former Ambassador who returned from Lagos.
He attended Friday prayers at the popular Da ‘wah Jumaat mosque in Nassarawa GRA on Friday.
This is a typical pattern of what is revving the engine of coronavirus in Kano where the dreaded disease, a curious stranger a few weeks ago, is now running faster ahead of the Kano State Government whose back-footed paces and worries are further compounded by the knotted maze of interactions, especially in the Nassarawa quarters of the ancient commercial city, where tracing of contacts is as secretive as unraveling the Sicilian Mafia.
People don’t want to talk, don’t know what to say and don’t know to whom to say it, if at all they know what to look out for, behind high walls of opulent residences that look more like the storied Green Zone of occupied Iraq in the days of infamous US war on Saddam Hussein, eerily quiet and haunted by an invisible yet serenely deceptive in self assurance, founded mainly on the resigned mantra of this-too-shall-pass shrugs.
As for the eminent COVID-19 stricken envoy, contacts charts since his return to Kano draw lines from Gingiyu area of town where he has his abode, to friends from many parts of Kano City, Masjid at which he observed the Juma’t prayers, to the private hospital where he was admitted for treatment, showing many hubs that a public health Hardley Chase or James Bond would find tantalizingly head-scratching, if not beyond daunting.
And that is for one patient. Kano now has 16 positive cases officially, a tiny tip of a gigantic iceberg of mass infestation floating menacingly below the currents of the ocean of humans that call Nigeria’s second most populous city and one of West Africa’s most historic cities home.
Like Lagos Like Kano. As in Lagos, money remains the enemy here too in Kano, by being too insufficient for the government to have enough medical and other amenities for the teeming population, and more crucially to have a well thought out and tangible welfare programme to ensure food and basic necessities, necessary to earn the right to keep the restless and self-reliant mercantilistic populations of Kano indoors for weeks on ends.
Yet money is sufficient in the pockets of innumerable numbers of billionaires and multimillionaires of Kano, famous and anonymous alike, to propagate within the upper crusts of the northern city, a repeat of the secret networks of private doctors, as has been fatally experimented in Lagos, to form an underground medical city where trusted doctors are confidentially approached to treat COVID-19 patients, outside the NCDC and Kano State Government designated COVID-19 Isolation and Treatment Centre, where Infectious Disease protocols are expected to be most possibly observed.
Confidential sources spoken to by KaftanPost, have identified two of such clinics where many recent returnees have checked into. Neither of the two medical directors of the respective private clinics, one a Nigerian native of a neighbouring state and the other a naturalized Nigerian of Middle Eastern origin, both Kano born, is known to be an infectious diseases specialist.
KaftanPost reporter, after hours of arms length but direct observations could see no signs of enhanced protection, such as restricted access and staff donning any Personnel Protection Equipment, as can apparently be observed at the Infectious Disease Centre in Yaba Lagos and in visuals of similar facilities all over the world.
An infectious disease ward nurse who spoke to KaftanPost on condition of anonymity, said that since joining the employment of Kano State after completion of the mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme and was retained, fear has not been as palpable as it is now, recalling that as a corps member during the days of the Ebola Virus, staff morale was very high and no staff or trainees contemplated quitting as can be heard from not a few nowadays.
Asked why any dedicated medics should contemplate abandoning their professional oaths at this crucial time of emergencies, our source retorted that it is not for lack of professional commitment but the ubiquitous spread of the coronavirus patients all over the metropolis, such that an innocent encounter with a supposed case of malaria or an apparently healthy patient may be a costly if not fatal encounter.
Our source also wonder why such basic safeguards as personnel protection clothing, masks, and other gears are not standard issues by now. “We love our work. We were not forced into it but we are not suicidal. We should not have to die when a little care is all it takes to stay alive and still help our patients”, our source said, to unanimous nods of both medical and lay staff, as well as patients and family, forming a small queue in front of the government hospital pharmacy.
Lagos is the canary in the mines of Kano and a stitch in time is sure to save much more than ninety nine lives, this reporter could not but ruminate, upon stepping into the otherwise bursting and bustling city whose commerce is put on a bed rest, yet the stubborn resolve of the people, or lack of it, appears not to have allowed the need to stay indoors and be socially distant to dawn into the psyche of the people, as many are to be seen roaming about the vastness of the restless streets.
If Kano, including the Government and the people, rich or poor, at Sabon Geri or Nassarawa, does not fight COVID-19 seriously along the line prescribed by who is who in the professional world of infectious diseases, including the global public health body, the World Health Organisation (WHO), then who will save the city?
