FG Considering Home Care For Coronavirus Patients

Photo credit: Businessday

Federal Government says it is now considering allowing COVID-19 patients to be catered for at home as bed space becomes a challenge, particularly in Lagos, the epicentre of the disease in Nigeria.

There are about 3,500 bed spaces available for COVID-19 patients across the country, Ihekweazu said, but added that FG was working with Lagos State government to make more bed spaces available. Due to this shortage, Ihekweazu said government was considering home care in Lagos State.

“We are struggling at the moment, ultimately we might have to change their strategy a little bit and start considering home care in certain circumstances, to provide a room where a patient can be managed sufficiently and, secondly, we are able to support the care by enabling health care workers come to that,” he said.

He further said the NCDC is scaling up testing for COVID-19 by deploying more health workers to go into communities to collect samples of cases that meet the case definition. He said all health-care workers have now been trained to go in quietly not to attract a lot of attention, particularly in Lagos, FCT and Kano States with ongoing community transmission. He urged every citizen within community to accept and give the healthcare workers the needed cooperation to enable them carry out their jobs.

Source: BusinessDay