The Lagos State Government has disclosed that its COVID-19 isolation centre at the Gbagada General Hospital will be transformed into fee-paying private wards.
The move, according to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, is in response to the growing requests from patients and families willing to pay for personalised care in government-run facilities.
Gov Sanwo-Olu said, “Payable fees for the private treatment will be moderately lower than charges at licenced private hospitals, while the state-owned treatment centre at the Infectious Diseases Hospital (IDH) in Yaba will continue to offer high-quality treatment to all persons free of charge.”
The governor further said a second oxygen plant which was under construction at the Gbagada General Hospital would come on stream in the next seven days, adding that oxygen demand had spiked to between 300 and 400 cylinders per day across state-owned treatment facilities.
He assured that his government was working towards ensuring that the availability and supply of oxygen surpassed the demand.
While he emphasised that the state government did not charge for the use of oxygen at its centres; he said the second plant was expected to boost the in-house capacity and availability of oxygen across all state government-managed treatment centres.
Governor Sanwo-Olu who has released N200m to support the COVID-19 response of the federal government-run isolation centres in the state, said the grant was specifically meant to ramp up the capacity of the federal isolation centres to efficiently manage and cure infections from all identified COVID-19 variants.
The beneficiary centres are the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi Araba; and the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Ebute Metta; which will get N150m and N50m respectively.
