The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control has approved Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University Teaching Hospital, Awka, Anambra State as coronavirus testing centre.
Our correspondent gathered that it was one of the moves by the Federal Government to increase the number of testing centres by making use of institutions that have required equipment across the country.
The approval was contained in an NCDC document entitled, “National Strategy to Scale Up Access to Coronavirus Disease testing in Nigeria.
The document maintained that the Federal Ministry of Health through NCDC had prioritised testing as one of the key strategies to the COVID-19 response in Nigeria,
“In order to contain the outbreak, the government has decided to rapidly scale diagnostic centres to cover all the 36 states and Abuja, the document stated.
It added,”Nigeria has only 12 functional testing facilities in eight states with the capacity to conduct minimal of 1500 tests per day in Lagos and 1000 tests per day in Abuja and others.
“In order to characterise the outbreak and understand the transmission of COVID-19, more people need to be tested. To achieve good results means leveraging the capacities and assets from other national disease programmes for efficiency.
The Chief Medical Director of the Teaching Hospital, Dr. Basil Nwankwo confirmed the approval to our correspondent on Friday.
He said, “Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University Teaching Hospital Amaku has been designated as a COVID-19 testing centre and we will do all within our capacity to support the fight against the spread of the scourge”.
“Governor Willie Obiano is desirous of making sure that the centre begins operation immediately.” Punch
