Osagie Ehanire, Minister of Health has disclosed that the team of 15 Chinese Doctors who arrived Nigeria in April are not guests of the federal government.
Ehanire who made the disclosure at the daily briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on Thursday said that the Chinese medics are staff of China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC).
It would be recalled that the arrival of the Chinese medics in the country was a huge subject of controversy among the citizens with Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) opposing treatment of COVID-19 patients by the foreign experts.
However, Ehanire stated that some of the Chinese citizens were technicians who worked for CCECC.
The Health Minister said,
“I think not all of them were doctors and I heard that some of them are technicians, but they are staff of CCECC.
“The Ministry of Health is not their host, so we can’t always explain what happened to them or where they are. There seems to be a lot of interest in these doctors. But they are the staff of the company and I think that they are on a company Visa.
“I will be very happy if you don’t ask me about where they are because they are not really our guests.
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“But we have been able to learn some things from them by interacting with them from their experience in their country and they did tell us and we shared ideas on what they did in their country in managing COVID-19.”