By CHARLES IWUOHA

The Executive Secretary of Enugu State Primary Health Care Development Agency (ENS-PHCDA), Dr George Ugwu, says Primary Health Care (PHC) centres have continued administering regular immunization and other services during this lockdown period.

Recall that the partial lockdown in Enugu State, following the State Government’s directive, was occasioned by the need to check the spread of Coronavirus pandemic.

Ugwu disclosed this to newsmen in Enugu on Tuesday while reacting to the functionality of the PHC centres in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said that the state and local governments had made adequate provisions for the centres that kept them running notwithstanding the situation at hand.

According to him, the PHC centres spread across the 17 council areas of the state had not close at any time; unlike what is heard and read of some other states.

“The State Governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, fully understands the overwhelming importance of these centres to the health and wellbeing of vast number of our people at the rural areas.

“Governor Ugwuanyi, who is ably supported by the council chairmen, have provided and made regular hand washing arrangement at the centres and provided alcohol-based sanitisers for patients and doctors,’’ he said.

According to him, there is an ongoing arrangement for the supply of adequate Personally Protective Equipment (PPE) in the entire PHC centres for use by health workers.

“We are also making another arrangement to ensure the re-stocking of the PPE at the centres periodically. These efforts are to ensure we protected our PHC workers properly,’’ he said.

The Executive Secretary said that arrangement had been concluded to train and retrain the PHC workers on case definition and symptoms of COVID-19 and other new knowledge gotten about the novel virus.

“The training and re-training will equipped them better to quickly identify a suspected Coronavirus patient and do immediate referral to the teaching hospitals since they are not allowed to treat such a case.

“This is necessary as the virus in the country is gradually getting to the community transmission level,” the ENS-PHCDA boss said.

However, Enugu State currently has no COVID-19 patient. The state Ministry of Health on April 15 and 16 discharged its two index COVID-19 patients, a husband and wife, with recent history of oversea travel.