Pharm. Olumide Akintayo, Former President Pharmaceutical Society Of Nigeria (PSN) and Chairman Assembly Of Health Care Professional Associations has urged the Federal Government to place the vulnerables in the society and Frontline Health Workers first in the administration of the much expected Covid-19 vaccines.
Nigeria is expected to recieve shipment of the much sorted after vaccines by March 2021. The government is to spend roughly around N400 billion for the procurement of vaccines.
With politicians already position in the forefront of recipient once the vaccines land in the country, Akintayo is of the opinion that priority should be given to community Pharmacists who are always number one in terms of exposure. He said before people in the community goes to hospitals, they first visit the community Pharmacists.
Akintayo said “the most vulnerable should naturally be the first set of beneficiaries and if we are looking at the most vulnerable groups, we are looking at the Frontline Health Workers. Frontline Health Workers include people like the most neglected staff of the workforce; community Pharmacists. Many people forget that over 70% of intervention actually take place at community pharmacies level before proceeding to secondary and tertiary health facilities and all that. For instance, if you have cold, you will not run to the hospital, you will run to the pharmacists. So we are looking at frontline health workers; community Pharmacists in particular. Also, we have the Medical Doctors, Nurses, Laboratory Scientists and the rest.”
In terms of risk factors, Pharm. Akintayo said, “the elderly are very vulnerable. We are looking at people who have compromised immune system, we are looking at people with weak state like diabetes, hypertension, respiratory disorder, asthma in that group. Those are the major risk factors in tackling this menace.
“It is an issue of common sense that these are the actually first in terms of priority.”
Explaining further on risk factors, the Chairman Of Assembly Of Health Care Professional Associations also said beside the job hazards which tend to expose health workers, he said those working in private facilities have been neglected, which is responsible for the spike among health workers.
He revealed that the country has lost sixteen pharmacists in the last one week to the dreaded coronavirus.
This he blamed on the administration of the country’s health system.
He said, “there are many reasons; some are job related hazards. The truth is that we cannot run away from it, you can only minimize it. In Pharmacists’ practices, I can confirm authoritatively that we have lost about sixteen Pharmacists, that I know, between last week and Wednesday. Infact one died even yesterday. There are many reasons. We run our society as if we are still in a stone age. We should call a spade a spade.
“A lot of these health workers, especially those who are not in the public sector are not provided Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Government, for instance has not provided PPE for players in the private sectors and huge quantum of these have been managing Covid-19 at that level.
“The level of enforcement of Covid-19 protocols, I don’t think is good enough from the private to the public sector. I don’t think they are good enough. You can imagine that there are people who are still under the illusion that Covid-19 is scam as far as Nigeria is concerned.
He therefore adviced the government to step up its ante.
