The Administrator, Enugu State Hospital Management Board, Dr Okechukwu Ossai, has urged health workers to be suspicious of every patient and apply high hygienic and pharmaceutical standards to avoid contacting COVID-19.
Ossai gave the warning on Tuesday in Enugu while speaking on the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic.
He spoke on the preparedness of health workers in the state to tackle the resurgence of the virus.
Ossai said all health workers had gone through series of training and re-training on COVID-19 and noting that the series of training covered case definition, self hygienic and pharmaceutical practices as well as need to put on their Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) always while inside health establishments.
“We have equally upgraded the frequency of daily disinfecting of all our 56 state-owned health facilities, that is, the General and cottage hospitals. We are genuinely concerned for the safety and protection of our health workers, who are the people in the frontline in the battle against the virus. The state government through the board has provided all supports both in terms of series of training, provision of PPE, disinfecting liquids and so on. I believe in the ideology of charity begins at home. If you cannot protect and save your own life, you cannot save the lives of others. So, we have continued to drum it loud, the need for our health workers to protect themselves and follow all best practices in attending to patients. They should be wary. Any patient can be a potential infection carrier, even the COVID-19. They must be on their guard always and follow all health and hospital protocols before seeing any patient, and use the PPE provided. Any highly suspicious case should be referred to the state COVID-19 task force immediately. There should be no negligence on this,” Ossai explained.
