The National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) on Sunday raised the alarm that almost 70 per cent of its members in “clinical practice” had contracted COVID-19.

The association blamed the development on lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for its members and non-disclosure of true symptoms of sickness by people seeking treatment.

To show how bad the situation is, NARD lamented that “almost all the doctors in the UCH Pediatrics Department, Lafia in Nasarawa State, had been infected with COVID-19.”

The association called on the government to come up with policies that would make it unlawful for patients to hide their medical conditions.

NARD’s First Vice President, Dr Adejo Arome, stated this at the weekend.

Also at the weekend the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) named Edo as the state with second-highest number of COVID-19 deaths in the country.

Arome, featuring on a television programme painted a sordid picture of the challenges facing doctors in this pandemic era.

He said he had been personally exposed to COVID-19 but could not be tested due to lack access to a testing facility.

Arome who, also lamented that some hospitals do not only lack hand gloves, they give one face mask to each of their doctors to use for two days.

The NARD First Vice-President said: “I must tell you that the morale of doctors is very low at this point in time. It is so disheartening that the number of health workers being infected with COVID-19 is increasing daily, and it seems that nothing is being done to reduce this number.

“Apart from that, I just heard that almost all the doctors in UCH pediatric department, Lafia, have been infected. And it is like that every day.

“In fact, right now, I believe that every doctor in clinical practice right now should have been exposed to covid-19. I was on treatment, although I did not have the test done because I could not have access to the test.

“Almost every doctor in clinical practice has been exposed and I can tell you that more than 70 percent of us have been infected because we don’t do tests, so we don’t know. You cannot just come and tell me that the rate of infection is low when we are not doing enough tests.

“Apart from PPE, patients do not come out truthfully to tell us their symptoms because almost everybody now knows what the symptoms of COVID-19 are.

“I think it is high time the Federal Government stepped up and brought out policies that will make it unlawful for patients and their relatives to come to the hospital and lie to doctors because by so doing, they are currently exposing us and our families.

“And to think of it, we have no insurance, and our hazard allowance is just mere N5,000. This is pathetic and very sad.

“In a pandemic, every patient coming into your consulting room is suspected to have COVID-19 until proven otherwise. But the truth is when we don’t have everything that we need to work with, you don’t expect the doctor that is treating the patients not to examine them.

“You will go to some hospitals and they will give a doctor one face mask for two days. You don’t even have gloves. You keep on writing prescriptions for patients to buy gloves and you as a doctor will feel bad because some people don’t even have food to eat, so why should you be writing them prescriptions to be buying gloves?

“Based on human sympathy, at the end of the day you will forget what it takes to keep yourself safe and by so doing, you end up exposing yourself.

“Once one of us gets exposed, that person ends up exposing more than 4,000 patients because the doctor-patient ratio in this country is one to about 4,000 patients.”

The weekly epidemiological report of COVID-19 situation by the NCDC shows that Edo State recorded 127( 8.9 per cent) deaths out the 1,435 so far in the country.

Lagos has the highest number of 271 (18.9 per cent), while the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has 118 (8.2 per cent (The Nation)

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