CoronavirusEconomyNigeriaWill Nigeria’s Battle with COVID-19 Become Too Expensive to Sustain?

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For every COVID-19 test carried out on suspected persons, Lagos, Nigeria’s epicenter of the viral infection with a population of over 20 million, spends between N40,000 and N50,000 ($102.56 – $128.21), Professor Akin Abayomi, Lagos State Commissioner for Health disclosed. The revelation by Prof. Abayomi highlights the magnitude of the burden of the disease and raises question about the sustainability of the fight against COVID-19.

With estimated population of 200 million and a virus that has degenerated to community transmission, placing several lives in danger and increasing risk of the healthcare system being deluged, a ramp up of diagnostic test has been recommended. As of May 21, 2020, the state government said since the outbreak of the disease in Nigeria, about 16,000 suspected cases of COVID-19 have been tested – costing the government N800 million.

“They are expensive because of what we need to carry out the test and preserve the samples. Dr Akinkunmi Olugbenga, an Infectious Disease expert and Molecular scientist at the Obafemi Awolowo University, told the West African Pilot News. “We need regular power supply, the expertise to take care of the materials, the consumables and even the instruments themselves are not cheap.”

Mr. Charles Mensah, the Chief Operating Officer and Managing Director of the Institute of Human Virology, Nigeria, agrees that COVID-19 diagnostic testing is expensive in the country, he attributed it to the forces of demand and supply and logistics. He told the West African Pilot News that the US Centre for Medicare Services pays $100 per test, “when you add the cost of logistics to Nigeria, our cost will surely be more than $100 per test.”

Testing of suspected cases of COVID-19 is regarded as a crucial determinant of whether countries would win the fight against the pandemic. This is why governments strive to set up more testing laboratories. With countries dealing with the viral infection at the same time, some say for poor countries, challenges, including scarcity of testing accessories and keeping up with the cost of carrying out tests as many economies are predicted to suffer a setback in the wake of the pandemic, may surface.

The Director-General of the National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), Professor Alex Akpa, said lack of reagents — an important testing accessory — stalled molecular diagnosis in Kano and Lagos for many days, WAP News reported.

Nigeria, as of May 23, 2020, has 7,016 confirmed cases and tested 41,907 samples. The country aims to test 2 million people in the next three months by ramping up testing to 50,000 per state within the period. Going by the estimate given by Professor Abayomi, each state will spend about N2.5 billion to test 50,000 persons.

Some people have described this target as a tall order considering that the country mainly uses Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) to diagnose. It is labour intensive as it requires a swab, a wait and specialist analysis to yield a result. Although Nigeria has fifteen laboratories and Lagos has established 20 sample collection centres, some have observed that a testing procedure that can be done at home by anyone would help achieve the target at a cheaper price. Dr Olugbenga said RT-PCR was the most reliable of all the available COVID-19 tests.

Mr Mensah has hope in the CEPHEID GeneXpert test. He told WAP News that Nigeria has hundreds of the machine which it is optimising for COVID-19 diagnostic test with the support of Global Fund and US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR).

“When completed, this will not only make cheaper tests available, it will take them closer to the people because almost every local government area will have at least one testing site,” Mr Mensah of the Institute of Human Virology told WAP News.

As more cases of COVID-19 are recorded daily in Lagos and other parts of Nigeria. The World Health Organisation, recently said “that this virus may never go away”, some people have said that the high cost of getting people tested may not be sustainable in the face of looming economic contraction in the wake of the pandemic. A cheaper and reliable diagnostic test method would help poor countries achieve testing targets and curb the spread of the virus,

Other infectious diseases including HIV and Tuberculosis, are currently diagnosed and treated without cost to patients because innovations have brought down the cost of managing the diseases. The 1$ dollar testing kit being developed in Senegal and the validation of the viral Ribonucleic Acid extraction by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), which would help local production of cheap testing kits for coronavirus, may help bring down the cost of getting people tested.

Dr Olugbenga does not believe the government will be consistent in spending huge amounts of money on COVID-19 testing. He said the country will need to adopt cheaper diagnostic test options eventually, but emphasised tests with reliable results.

“The sustainability of funding diagnostic tests by the government in the fight against COVID-19 is uncertain,” Dr. Olugbenga concluded.

Adeola Oladipupo (Correspondent)
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