The Vice Chancellor of Bayero University Kano, BUK, Professor Muhammad Yahuza Bello, has said the university is set to launch its COVID-19 test centre to complement the effort of the government in the fight against the pandemic.
The VC who spoke on Saturday at a press briefing in the Kano state government house said the test centre which had gotten the approval of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) would become operational in the next ten days.
He said the NCDC officials had inspected the laboratories and equipment at the University’s Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Control and had given approval for the centre to run tests for coronavirus.
He said over N50million has been expended for the establishment of the facility.
“In Bayero university we have been making arrangements to see if will be able to address this particular problem. Even if we cannot do all the testing we are working on establishing a testing centre.
“We hope that in the next one week maximum of ten days we are going to open a testing centre that will run the capacity of testing at least an average of 180 persons per day as against the 40 that the current centre does.
“To do that we had moved some equipment others that are in other centres of the university, the PRC machines that we have in other places have been moved over to centre.
“The bio-safety cabinets from other places have been moved in.
“We are spending over N50m to put the centre up to date and also to purchase testing equipment” he explained.
“For the beginning, the order that we had now placed is at least 1500 testing kits that will last for at least ten days when we start, but after that we are to purchase more testing kits because the testing is most important.
He appealed to Kano state government to provide Personal Protective Equipment for health workers at the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, saying “there are a lot of suspicion that people with ailment, a number of them could be COVID-19 and the main concern there for the medical professionals some of them are threatening to down their tools that they don’t have adequate protection.
“The PPE are not adequate. Even though Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital is a federal institution, considering the situation that we are in, I want to appeal to the state government to assist more because if the health personnel at Aminu Kano down tools the situation of Kano will become worse” he concluded.
As at 11:55 pm of 25th April, Kano state has 77 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with Lagos and Abuja having 689 and 138 respectively. The total confirmed cases in the country is 1182, while 222 have been discharged and 35 deaths recorded.
