Having had contacts with suspected Coronavirus persons, some doctors at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Oyo State have embarked on self-isolation at the hospital, hospital authorities said.
“Presently, there are some of our doctors who are on self-isolation or quarantine because of their exposure to suspected cases, the Chief Medical Director (CMD) of the hospital, Abiodun Jesse Otegbayo, disclosed on Wednesday.
Otegbayo, a Professor, did not disclose the number of doctors who are on isolation but said “we don’t have to wait till we start seeing positive ones before we take appropriate actions. As the CMD, I have the sole responsibility to take care of and protect our staff from unnecessary infection and I just want to be proactive”.
“I believe in prevention rather than all these curative approaches. Some countries have been able to reduce the number of cases because they locked down early,” he noted.
The CMD, however, revealed that the hospital had closed down outpatient clinics, including Medicine, Surgery, and Children and Out-Patients Departments.
“Initially, we thought we should leave the outpatient department open but we realised that continuing to do that in the absence of enough materials to protect all our staff, including our doctors, nurses and health attendants is not the best option, and the best option will be to lock this place down.”
He added that measures had also been taken to ensure that emergency services remain open under strict compliance with preventive measures and standard infection control precautions.
“We have channels for taking care of those with emergencies and we are going to do that to the best of our abilities. I usually call the Accident and Emergency Department a mad house, but we have had to put in some measures to ensure that is not just the staff, but also patients with emergencies are protected.
“We have a spill-over tent outside our Accident and Emergency with measures that everyone who comes in maintains a safe distance from one another and these measures are necessary to ensure that we all work under the best condition in order to put in our best.
“As the chief executive of this hospital, I have the responsibility to see things for myself and I am just coming from a ward round and we have decided to close down some wards.
Otegbayo stated that the university college had collapsed the wards so as to reduce the number of patients on admission.
He stressed that “those who are stable we are discharging because we need to sort out and limit the number of staff that will be exposed to any possible infection,”.
