The Federal Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, on Friday, inspected and commissioned the newly built Ultra-modern Accident and Emergency Unit of the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Ebutte Metta.
The minister, who also inspected other infrastructural development at the hospital said he was pleased and satisfied with what the medical team has been able to do in terms of improving service delivery and infrastructural development.
“I’ve gone round to see every department that is involved in the clinical care of patients. I’ve seen the diagnostic equipment and I’ve seen the enthusiasm in the staff. I can only say that this is impressive,” Ehanire said.
The minister, while commending the team’s cordiality, said they have been able to raise the bar in terms of quality and in terms of standard, which, according to him, is what is expected despite being in a Covid-19 pandemic period in which the tendency for routine services could suffer because of the tension that has been focused on the pandemic.
“There is a lot of commendation for the team, from the chairman of the board to the medical director, the staff, doctors, nurses, laboratory scientists, pharmacists,” he said.
The commissioning, which heralded the minister’s visitation coincided with the launch of a Covid-19 monitoring app developed by PharmAccess Foundation in partnership with Luscii Technologies based in Amsterdam.
The remote-screening and monitoring mobile application, which is available on Google’s play store and IOS store was developed in a bid to support Lagos State’s response in containing the virus.
Called ‘Luscii’, this innovative mobile app screens users for Covid-19 symptoms and allows daily monitoring of symptoms such as body temperature, presence of cough, headaches, and others based on NCDC guidelines.
BDSUNDAY learnt that the digital service was set up in partnership with FMC whose COVID Response Team of trained medical responders contact the app users for counselling as well as diagnostic testing in case the user falls within the high-risk category for COVID-19.
“The system monitors and assesses your risks and determines your level of risk. At some point, depending on the measurement that you have, your inputs trigger an alert in the background where you have trained medical responders who see the measurements that have been put in the system,” said Njide Ndili, Country Director, PharmAcess.
She said the system flags the risk patients and they (the medical responders) contact them, counsel them, and in some instances, have them evacuated or tested and if they are positive, treated.
Since the service started over the last three months, PharmAcess has recorded over 12, 000 downloads in Lagos, out of which are 3, 000 active users engaging on the system.
“Through the self-monitoring application, we have evacuated and tested 18 patients and out of which, eight have been positive, and they were treated free of charge. This is a free service,” Ndili said.
