* Abia gov, Ikpeazu


By Ogbonnaya Ikokwu, Umuahia

The President, Association of Resident Doctors, Federal Medical Centre, Umuahia, Abia State, Dr Onuh Felix, has bemoaned the poor state of the isolation centres in the state, describing the situation as worrisome.

 Felix urged the federal and state governments to, as a matter of urgency, expeditiously equip and expand the existing facilities at the FMC Umuahia, as well as other isolation centres in the state.

He made the call on Monday in a statement titled, ‘Combating the COVID-19 pandemic in Abia State – A call for action.’

He pointed out that reports from several testing centres in the country showed an increasing number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 patients who did not have any foreign travel history.

Felix said the development suggested an upsurge in both hospital and community transmission of the virus, while insisting that the situation in Abia State and reports from different centres in the country suggested obvious deficiency in the capacity of various states to test suspected patients and exposed individuals.

He said, “The low numbers recorded in these states consequently confer a false sense of security and confidence on the populace. This trend is dangerous and calls for concerted effort from governments at all levels to ramp up efforts to increase their capacity to test suspected cases and exposed individuals.

“The abysmal level of compliance to the use of face mask and lockdown directive in Abia State is a cause for concern. Despite government’s directive, human and vehicular movement mostly go unhindered, a development sometimes abetted by sharp practices of security outfits.”

He described any attempt to keep  people at home without a commensurate plan to cater for the attendant economic hardship as a recipe for societal unrest and therefore called on government to resist the temptation of paying only lip service to the issue of palliatives, especially for the poor and vulnerable in the state.

source: The Punch