The United Nations Children Endowment Fund (UNICEF), has trained 40 frontline health workers in Jigawa on COVID-19 case management.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the training, conducted between Sept. 23 and Sept. 25, was organized in collaboration with Jigawa State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (JSPHCDA), Federal Ministry of Health, and the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), in Dutse.
Saudat Abdullahi, Health Specialist, UNICEF Field Office Kano, said on Saturday in Dutse that the trainees were drawn from Federal Tertiary Hospitals and Institutions (FTHIs) supporting COVID-19 outbreak response in the state.
Abdullahi said the training was part of responses to overcome the pandemic in the country.
According to him, case management is part of the responses and strategies to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.
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“The training is aimed to build the capacity of the health workers in the areas of handling and treating COVID-19 cases.
“It is also to build their capacity on how to avoid and protect themselves and the rest of the community from contracting the disease,” she said.
Also speaking, the JSPHCDA Executive Secretary, Dr Kabir Ibrahim, pointed out that the training was to increase the clinical suspicion of the health workers, so as to be able to detect patients and manage them properly.
“The idea is that we should avoid what we called ‘missed opportunity’, where people come in with infections but are not detected.
“So, the training is for them to be able to detect difficult conditions and identity infection and other conditions in patients.
“The exercise is to increase their level of clinical suspicion, so as to be able to detect cases and manage them accordingly,” Ibrahim said.
Some of the participants, who spoke with NAN, expressed joy that the training would improve their capacities in the areas of case management, surveillance, and infection prevention and control.
The participants added that the training will also enable them to efficiently manage and tackle the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic without being infected or infect other health workers.
One of the participants, who is a Medical Doctor with Federal Medical Center (FMC) Birninkudu, Dr. Tasiu Yahaya, commended the organizers of the training, as it equipped them with the required knowledge to fight the COVID-19 in the state.
“The whole idea of the training is to ensure that the health workers don’t have this infection through their day to day work, and of course they do not through their practice let other people, who do not have it get it or let visitors to the hospital get it.
”So, we’re really thankful to the organizers,” Yahaya said.
Also, a matron from FMC Birninkudu, Rafi’at Abu, who commended the organizers for the gesture, said that it would go along to eradicate or reduce drastically the level of COVID-19 cases in the state, and Nigeria in general.
“Our main job is to assist or take care of those that get infected and prevent ourselves and others from getting infected,” she said
Abu pledged to step down the training to her colleagues who did not have the opportunity to attend.