Expert Advocates Integration of COVID-19 Services into Nigeria’s Health System

By Eric Ojo

A Consultant Public Health Physician, Dr. Augustine Ajogwu has harped on the need to integrate the services of COVID-19 into other services in the Nigerian health system.

Dr. Ajogwu, a staff of the Department of Public Health, Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) Abuja, made the observation during an exclusive interview with Metro Daily Nigeria.

He said the idea of integrating the COVID-19 services into other interventional services in the country’s health system will go a long way in improving the outcomes and also save the sector from making previous mistakes.

“I think we should integrate the services into other services we have on ground because that’s how HIV came, there was this fear and all those things but eventually we are living with HIV now, it has become a chronic disease. We should be making efforts in this direction instead channeling resources only to COVID-19 when we have other diseases that are killing people more than the pandemic.

“We just came out of Cholera outbreak that even killed people more than COVID-19. Malaria is still there, it is still killing our young people, our young children, Tuberculosis (TB) is still there, High blood Pressure (BP), Diabetes is also still there. So, I think we should integrate it into other services so that all the resources we have can be equitably utilized for better results”, he said.

According to him, now that COVID-19 infection rate has come down remarkably, although it has not gone out completely, the focus should be on how to integrate its services into other areas within the system.

“We have not been having cases in the treatment centres but along the line we discovered that a lot of people have the disease but they are not serious, so we now advised that such persons can stay at home and use the home management kind of care, while those that are serious can now go the treatment centres. We still meet at the Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) weekly to continue to monitor the trend of the disease and see how it goes”, he further explained.

The public health expert, however acknowledged that dealing with epidemic can sometimes be challenging and problematic, especially if it is an epidemic of a disease that you don’t know about, adding that it therefore comes with fear and anxiety.

“So, when we started the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) COVID-19 response, there was fear and excitement. Excitement in the sense that we are going to learn with the approach we use it in tackling all diseases. Fear in the sense that it was a new disease and we did not know then how it was going to be tackled.

“But we thank God today that we have learnt a lot over the period, we have learnt about the disease, how it can be transmitted, how it can be controlled. Moreover, there is already a vaccine, varieties of vaccines that people can take to prevent being infected with the disease, even when you get infected the effect will not be so much like those that have not been vaccinated”, he stressed.

Dr. Ajogwu also noted that at the initial stage of the response there was strong political will in terms of government bringing out resources, ensuring that health workers are been protected to do a lot and there were free services for people to go test free and the drugs were also made free and the vaccine came and was also made free.

“The only challenge is that health workers who came down with the disease and even those who lost their lives, there was and there is even nothing like insurance to cover their families and they are not even remunerated well enough to take care of their families if they are not there. This is one of the challenges the health workers have faced”, he further disclosed.

On Cholera outbreak, he said it is a seasonal disease that occurs particularly in the raining season and that because most of the rural communities don’t have portable water, during the season, the rain will flush excreta from the ground into their stream and the stream is their source of water and when they drink from it, they start having diarrhea diseases.

“We had it last year, as it is now, we are still in a watchful mood to see what is going on. In our intervention, there was collaborative efforts. That is what we learnt from COVID0-19 response, that agencies and people should work together. So, we collaborated with the FCT Ministry of Environment, and Water Resources.

“We treat those that are ill but we can’t provide water, it is not our jurisdiction. So, we collaborated with them to identify the communities and also look at their water source. They did the water analysis to determine the microbes. Those have the faulty boreholes were repaired and those who don’t have borehole, the FCT minister directed that they should be sending water tank to them until the functional borehole was provided for them”, he further disclosed.