Bauchi office of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Bauchi State Ministry of Health and the Guild of Medical Directors of Private Hospitals of Nigeria, Bauchi State Chapter have jointly organised training for medical workers in the state on the COVID-19 pandemic to update them on techniques required in handling cases in order to reduce risk of infection.
While speaking at the opening ceremony of the training held on Tuesday at Bauchi State College of Nursing, State Chairman of the Guild of Medical Directors of Private Hospitals of Nigeria in Bauchi, Dr Hassan Mohammed Garba explained that the training was aimed at educating the frontline health workers on how to protect themselves and the members of the society from contracting the novel disease.
He also said that participants of the workshop were drawn from all private hospitals in the state adding that they would be trained on how to detect coronavirus patients at their hospitals so that they can refer them to appropriate facilities for immediate professional medicare.
According to him, over 5, 000 doctors have so far died of the disease globally hence the need to train the frontline health workers in the state to enable them to win the battle.
Hassan Mohammed said: “The diseases we know, we read them from our books for ages. The World Health Organisation calls this one novel, that is a new disease. But this COVID 19 we don’t have it in our books. So, we have to think out of the box as humans to survive it.
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“This is the first time any state in this country has taken an initiative to do this. In the North-East, there are less than 1, 700 doctors. So that means we are already short. We are synergising, the public and private sectors to maximally utilise what we have. If we don’t do that, we are going to lose this battle.”
Hassan Mohammed who is also the Medical Director of PAHLYCON hospitals, Bauchi said that the training would help private health workers to complement their counterparts in the public facilities through detection of COVID-19 patients in time and making referrals to the designated government hospitals.
He then noted that while coronavirus patients are referred to public hospitals, the private facilities will concentrate on the treatment of the regular diseases so that burdens will reduce on public health institutions.
It will be recalled that the State Governor, Sen Bala Mohammed Abdulkadir, had directed the State Taskforce on COVID-19 and Lassa Fever to in collaboration with the WHO organise a training for the Frontline health workers particularly those from FMC, Azare on the techniques required to handle COVID-19 suspected cases in order to reduce to the barest minimum the risk of the health workers getting infected.
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