COVID-19: Kwara trains health experts, screens travellers at borders, airports

Kwara State government has embarked on training of medical personnel from both public and private health institutions in the state as part of measures to prevent and control the COVID-19 pandemic in the state.

Speaking at a state-level training of trainers on infection prevention and control in Ilorin on Monday, the state director, Public Health, Ministry of Health, Dr Oluwatosin Fakayode, said that with an increasing number of victims of COVID-19, the state government has stationed health experts at various land borders and airports to screen travellers and immigrants.

Fakayode, who said that the training involved the first cluster of 25 top clinicians from tertiary and secondary health institutions, including highly patronised hospitals, added that the training would be taken to all the 16 local government areas of the state.

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“In line with governor’s directive, as we recall that the technical team was set up yesterday to push out strategies, thus we are today training top clinicians in our tertiary, secondary and private practitioners. This is to improve the knowledge base of this set of clinicians about infection prevention and control, and more specifically, to know how to improve our strategies against the dreaded COVID-19 disease.

“This is the first cluster of 25 participants in line with the directive of His Excellency. We’ll still have different clusters of top health workers that will be trained to contain the dreaded virus, prevent and keep Kwara safe.

“Here we have senior medical doctors, nurses, Red Cross, private practitioners and institutions. This is because the issue of health has to be holistic. They are all trained and they’re expected to cascade the training so we can remain safe in the state”, he said.

Also speaking, one of the participants, Professor Baba Awoye Isa, deputy chairman, Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Kwara State and a consultant with the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH), said that the training is essential, adding that knowledge gained would be stepped down to communities.

Kwara State government realising that health workers need to be trained organised the programme so that people that are trained here will go back to their various workplaces to train other people in order to step down the knowledge gained from here to other health care workers on this COVID-19 that is ravaging the nations all over the world.

Participants are trained on the use of personal protective devices, handwashing, infection prevention and control programme generally. These are big topics we dealt with properly and will to back to our various places of work, our community health centres to train other people”, he said.

NIGERIAN TRIBUNE