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The Chief Medical Director of the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Professor Jesse Otegbayo, has disclosed that the hospital has successfully treated more than 150 coronavirus patients since the index case was recorded in Oyo State.
Otegbayo, who made the disclosure on Friday at the commissioning of Chief Tunde Afolabi Infectious Disease Centre donated to the hospital by Jospehus Foundation, said 18 out of the patients died in the course of treatment.
The CMD said that number of mortality was recorded because the hospital only admits the “sickest of the sick.”
He said: ‘I don’t have the exact figures but the last one I saw was about 159 and 18 of them died. We have that mortality because we take the sickest of the sick. The most severe cases are brought to the University College Hospital where that is the only place they can be treated.
“We have some of them that have comorbidities like hypertension, diabetes, asthma and some other chronic lung diseases. Some of them have kidney failure that require dialysis which is not available in many other places in Oyo State. That is why we record mortalities at the UCH.”
Speaking on the newly commissioned Infectious Disease Centre, Otegbayo disclosed that the centre will not only take care of COVID-19 patients, but it will also take care of patients with other transmissible infections such as Lassa fever, HIV among others.
He added that the function of the centre goes beyond using it as an isolation centre for COVID-19 patients, adding that the centre has been equipped with facilities such as: state-of-the-art hospital beds, mulitparameter monitors for all the beds, 60 KVA generator, kitchen, laundry and waiting area for patients.
“We also have CCTV for all the rooms and with a monitoring centre, we have nurses bay and doctors call room. These are all the facilities among others that we have,” the CMD said.
Earlier, the representative of the donor and former Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Professor Oladapo Afolabi, said the donation of the centre is the first phase of what Josephus Foundation will do for the hospital.
Afolabi admonished Nigerians to stop the stigmatisation of coronavirus survivors, saying: “Any infectious disease can attack anybody and COVID-19 is not a disease that if you take your precautions, you could be caught unawares. So, there is no point stigamtising whoever has this disease. Once you survived it, you cannot transmit it, you are cured. Let us encourage ourselves to fight the disease. One of the tools we intend to use to fight and defeat the disease is this centre where you can be treated and be cured.”