…Assures of preparedness to combat the Coronavirus pandemic
As Cross River State scale up preparedness for any possible outbreak of Novel Coronavirus, not fewer than 200 health workers, including Medical Doctors, Nurses, medical laboratory scientists, Pharmacists and Technicians have been trained.
The training started with a 3 day training of trainers (TOT) in the conference hall of university of Calabar teaching Hospital (UCTH) which was followed this week with a larger scale training of volunteer healthcare personnel across all professional groups from both the private and public healthcare facilities in CRS.
Making this known to journalists on Thursday, Special Adviser to the Governor on Health and the facilitator, Dr David Ushie said the step down training was in response to National guidelines on Covid-19 which empowers the state to build capacity of healthcare professionals who will man the isolation centres.
Ushie stated that the volunteer training is holding at the New faculty of medicine building in the Medical College of the University of Calabar given their larger size class rooms blocks.
The training is to equip the volunteers with infection prevention and control (IPC) skills necessary to stay free from contracting the virus while caring for patients.
He disclosed that the CRS branch of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and Management of UCTH, as well as the leadership of the other healthcare professionals have been so supportive since the beginning of the training and have contributed their quota in terms of knowledge transfer, manpower and counselling.
“As you can see we have up to three lecture halls used for the training. We had to hold it here in University of Calabar due to spacing requirements for social distancing. Also observe that everybody is wearing mask. At the end of this training our caregivers will be equipped with basics approved techniques of handling cases beginning from contact tracing to testing, isolation and treatment.”
Ushie went further to applaud the Commissioner for Health, Dr Betta Edu for her steadfastness despite the pressure from NCDC and FG over the free status of Cross River State.
He noted that the Chairman of Cross River Sate Covid-19 Response Taskforce has been at her optimal best ensuring that nothing was left undone as Cross River State intensify her effort in maintaining Covid-19 free status.
