The North East Youth Stakeholders Forum has raised alarm over perceived marginalization of northern Nigeria on the setting up of Convid-19 testing laboratories by the Federal Government.
The forum in a statement in Maiduguri signed by its spokesman, Comrade Shettima Umar, said the development was disturbing and needed to be addressed urgently.
“Experts across the globe have stated clearly that there is nothing which is as important in curtailing transmission of COVID-19 like increasing testing capacity, in fact increasing testing capacity is much more important than increasing number of mechanical ventilators or hospital Beds as far as COVID-19 is a concern, and this is why World Health Organization is holding on to the slogan of ‘testing.
“Objectively, there is a seeming marginalization of testing centers in the North. There are 22 Federal Teaching Hospitals in Nigeria, 7 of these 22 Teaching Hospitals are in Northern Nigeria, and Northern Nigeria also has several Federal Medical centers. 70% of the Teaching Hospitals in Nigeria have virology laboratories that have been fully neglected by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
“Recently, NCDC released a map showing six molecular laboratory networks in the country, and sadly enough there is no single testing laboratory in the whole of the North.
“We all know that Northern Nigeria is a region with a dense population which should be a pointer to the fact that we are in dire need of a fully equipped and functional testing facilities across the North to quickly cut off the local transmission.
“We are in the know of how fast this Covid-19 spreads, and irrespective of our location of residence we all come in contact with one another in one way or the other.”
The forum further observed that some people are asymptomatic, and might not necessarily know they are Covid-19 positive until they are tested, and wonder how can such people be tested if they have no access to the testing laboratory.
“The prime mission of NCDC is ‘To protect the health of Nigerians through evidence prevention, integrated disease surveillance and response activities, using a one health approach, guided by research and led by a skilled workforce’, and Northern Nigeria should not be left out of the missions of the NCDC.”
The group said it was not satisfied with the explanation and three weeks timetable announced by the authorities of NCDC to set up laboratories in the north and call for more urgent steps.
“It is with this regards that we called on the Director-General of NCDC in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health to with a matter of urgency do all they can towards ensuring that some laboratories should be selected for testing setups in the Northern Nigeria in order to suppress the spread of this pandemic,” the spokesman pleaded.
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