Expert medical assessment of the medical preparedness of Cross River State to combat and contain the rage of the Corona virus pandemic, should it hit the state, has revealed that information so far given by health officials in the CRS Ministry of Health on the preparedness of the state to handle this pandemic may after all be untrue, www.calitown.com can reveal.
While Betta Edu, who heads the Ministry of Health has taken to the media, granting reassuring interviews, two consultants in the University of Calabar, who have elected to remain anonymous for obvious reasons think otherwise. “Your Commissioner for Health reads a lot of science fiction and cannot make the distinction between fiction and truth. Please, ignore whatever the woman says. There is NOTHING on ground in the State” one said.
A second expert, a Professor in UCTH maintained to us in detail that, “To be honest, I doubt that we are ready. The least available resource that we have to fight this scourge is appropriate information on prevention of it’s spread and containment by quarantine of those exposed. Our capacity for contact tracing is very limited, our cultural, religious and traditional practices aggregate communities instead of social distancing. There’s a dangerous level of disbelief amongst our people fueling their lack of adherence to instructions.”
He continued: “On the hospital side… Sadly, we probably do not have more than two ventilators in any hospital in CRS. The total number of functional ventilators, in fact, may not be more than five. The space for quarantine is very limited and staff required to manage the quarantined persons grossly inadequate in number, work gear, and training. The geography of CRS doesn’t help matters… If Calabar is unprepared, can you imagine the Northern Senatorial zone and towns bordering the Cameroons with the challenging topography?… we need to pray and encourage social distancing, hand washing, and self-isolation, beyond that… Only God can help us.”
Hopefully, there are no reported cases of the virus infection in the state.
