Health workers in Kano State have expressed readiness to serve the people at different capacities despite the risk of being infected by COVID-19.
Some of the health workers, who shared their experiences with Daily Trust said although they were working under intense risk of being infected by COVID-19, that would not stop them from serving humanity.
A health worker at Kano State COVID-19 isolation Centre at Kwanar Dawaki, who pleaded anonymity, told Daily Trust that he was posted to the centre last week and the personnel he relieved were all infected by COVID-19, but that did not stop him from carrying on with the job.
“I was posted there just last week and the man that I relieved and his wife were all infected by the disease; but that did not scare me from relieving him. Many people died in the course of discharging their duties and if Allah has destined that I am going to die from COVID-19, I must die, and there is nothing one can do to prevent that.
“I keep on wondering whenever I heard people saying that we do abscond from our duty posts. Remember, we are working under obligation and none of us as professionals will like to disobey such obligations,” he said.
The Director of Bayero University Kano (BUK) Center for Infectious Diseases, Research and Control, Professor Isa Abubakar Sadiq also debunked allegations of health workers absconding from their duty posts.
He said as far as the laboratory is concerned, there was no such issue in Kano, noting that people working in the laboratory know the significance of safety issues.
Professor Sadiq said the NCDC personnel that arrived Kano were taking the issue of bio-safety very seriously, adding that they were undertaking thorough assessment and training of personnel as far as safety is concerned.
He said although three personnel working at the AKTH laboratory were infected by COVID-19, but that did not constitute sufficient reason for others to abscond from the laboratory.
The director said the three infected persons were currently undergoing treatment at the isolation center, while the remaining staff centre have continued with their duty.
Professor Sadiq, however, assured that the BUK COVID-19 test laboratory is ready for commissioning.
Speaking to Daily Trust on Thursday, Professor Sadiq said 98.5 percent of the needed facilities at the laboratory had been installed, test-run and were working perfectly.
He said the team is now working on the standard operating procedures, job descriptions, while at the same time all the needed personnel were trained and ready to commence work at the centre.
“It is state-of-the-art laboratory courtesy of the goodwill of the BUK Vice-Chancellor, Professor Muhammad Yahuza Bello, who assembled a team of prominent scientists to join the centre for infectious disease research in actualising his dream.
The university has identified several machines and gadgets and deployed the same to this centre and allocated a sum of about N50 million just to make the centre functioning.
“For the past five weeks, the personnel of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) have been with us making an assessment of the machines, bio-safety measures being taken, and then looking at the laboratory management arrangement. They have satisfied all our arrangements and now ready to commission the centre.
“We are holding meetings to allocate job descriptions to each member of the team. The good thing is that the new laboratory has the capacity of taking 190 samples in a day as against the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital laboratory which has the capacity of only 80 samples per day,” he said.
Professor Sadiq added that the centre had a team of 40 personnel including junior workers such as cleaners and administrative staff, saying all the 40 personnel were staff of the university.
He further said the university would soon establish a call-centre and teleconferencing facility at the centre, saying the BUK Centre of Information Technology would handle the issue of teleconferencing.
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