The National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) has claimed that majority of its members are infected with Covid-19.
This is according to Dr Adejo Arome, NARD’s First Vice President while speaking during an interview with Channels Television on Sunday.
Arome said that almost 70% of its members in “clinical practice” are infected with Covid-19. He also lamented that “almost all the doctors in the UCH Pediatrics Department, Lafia in Nasarawa State, had been infected with COVID-19.”
Dr Arome noted that he had been personally exposed to COVID-19 but could not be tested due to lack of access to a testing facility.
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He also complained that some hospitals do not only lack hand gloves, they give one face mask to each of their doctors to use for two days.
The association noted that lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for its members and non-disclosure of true symptoms of sickness by people seeking treatment is contributing to this infection rate.
NARD is, thus, appealing to the government to come up with policies that would make it unlawful for patients to hide their medical conditions.
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What they are saying
Arome, speaking on Channels TV, illustrated the challenges facing doctors in this pandemic era. He said:
“I must tell you that the morale among we doctors is very low at this point in time. It is so disheartening that the number of health workers being infected with Covid-19 is increasing daily – and it seems nothing is being done to reduce this number.
I heard that almost all the doctors in certain health facilities, including the UCH are infected. It is like that every day and I believe that every doctor in clinical practice should have been exposed to Covid-19.
Apart from PPE, people are not being truthful. They go to one hospital the doctor there tells them this is what I’m suspecting and when they are told what is wrong, they run away praying and thinking that they will get a different diagnosis elsewhere.
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“I think it is high time the Federal Government stepped up and brought out policies that will make it unlawful for patients and their relatives to come to the hospital and lie to doctors because by so doing, they are currently exposing us and our families.
“In a pandemic, every patient coming into your consulting room is suspected to have COVID-19 until proven otherwise. But the truth is when we don’t have everything that we need to work with, you don’t expect the doctor that is treating the patients not to examine them.
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“You will go to some hospitals and they will give a doctor one face mask for two days. You don’t even have gloves. You keep on writing prescriptions for patients to buy gloves and you as a doctor will feel bad because some people don’t even have food to eat, so why should you be writing them prescriptions to be buying gloves?
“Once one of us gets exposed, that person ends up exposing more than 4,000 patients because the doctor-patient ratio in this country is one to about 4,000 patients.”
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What you should know
The weekly epidemiological report of COVID-19 situation by the NCDC shows that:
- Lagos has the highest number of covid-19 related deaths – 271 (18.9%).
- Edo State recorded 127( 8.9%) deaths out the 1,435 so far in the country.
- The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has 118 (8.2%)
According to Nairametrics Covid-19 tracker, as of Sunday 24th January 2021
- The total number of cases stood at 121,566.
- The total number of death stood at 1,497.
- The total number of tests conducted stood at 1,258,534.