The Guild of Medical Directors (GMD) has appealed to the federal government to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) for private medical practitioners because of the increasing deaths among its members from exposure to the coronavirus (COVID-19) infection.
Till date, three private medical practitioners have lost their lives from treating patients for other ailments, not knowing they were COVID-19 asymptomatics (not showing symptoms).
The President of GMD, Professor Femi Babalola, who made this known in a statement in Abuja, explained that although COVID-19 seems to be the major diseases ravaging the country, however, private hospitals are still attending to patients with other illnesses.
According to him, “In previous meetings with the Ministry of Health, private hospitals have stressed that they are in the frontline of the battle against the COVID-19 epidemic. This is for the simple reason that private hospitals account for not less than 70 percent of consultations in the country.
“It is therefore, inevitable that some patients with the disease will turn up in private hospitals. Unfortunately, many of them will be asymptomatic carriers of the disease. The instructions we have been given by the Ministry of Health is to refer such cases as soon as we identify them, or suspect them to be COVID-19 cases.
“This is all very well, and not contested by the Guild. But usually before a patient can be identified as a COVID-19 suspect, some interaction would inevitably have occurred with such patients, in the form of history taking and examination.
“Also, if a doctor, following this interaction, suspects that a patient might be a COVID-19 case, there is invariably a time lag between the time of suspicion and the time when NCDC officials arrive to take samples for confirmatory testing.
“This is compounded by the fact that some patients disguise their true travel history, in an attempt to avoid stigmatization.
“As we speak, three of our members have died – Dr. Aliyu Yakubu, Dr. Dominic Essien, and Dr. Emeka Chugbo, not because they necessarily want to treat COVID-19 patients as the impression may have been given, but because they inevitably came across these patients in the course of their duties.”
He further added: “We appeal once more to the Federal Ministry of Health to assist in the provision of appropriate protective kit and facilities to enable Private hospitals to continue attending to patients during this difficult period.
“To facilitate the quick identification of patients with COVID-19, private hospitals need to be provided with rapid serological test kits. Some of these kits, such as the Cellex Incorporation test, or the Chembio test, have already been validated by the American Food and Drug Administration and are in use in the USA.
“They are sufficiently sensitive and specific for such use, and will tremendously assist our members to identify suspect cases. Such positive cases can then be subjected to confirmatory molecular tests.
“The impression created that our colleagues would knowingly treat infected patients in their facilities for financial reward is erroneous.”
He therefore, appealed to members of the public not to conceal their true travel or exposure history in order not to endanger Private Practitioners.