Ernest Nwokolo, Abeokuta
FEARS pervaded the Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital (OOUTH), Sagamu, as 20 medical laboratory staff of the hospital and a family of four tested positive for the dreaded COVID -19 pandemic.
The Nation learnt that a family of four had been infected by their father, who is a staff at the teaching hospital’s laboratory unit.
It was learnt that following a wave of symptoms associated with Coronavirus that swept through the staff of the laboratory unit of the hospital with the attendant death of one of them last Friday, tests were immediately carried out on 70 of the workers, with 20, testing positive to the virus. They have all been directed to embark on self-isolation.
One of the staff of the hospital who spoke in confidence, blamed the mass infections on the insensitivity of the management of the teaching hospital to the plights of the medical laboratory staff dealing with the patients.
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He said: “the OOUTH management under Dr Peter Adefuye, should be blamed for whatever happened to the laboratory staff because of its refusal to provide us with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) that we needed to have as health workers having direct dealing with the samples of COVID-19 patients.
“When they started bringing the samples of COVID-19 patients to us last month, the Director of Medical Laboratory Services Department wrote the management demanding for those things to be put in place so that in the course of caring for others, we will also not be jeopardizing our lives, but the management did nothing.
“The management of the hospital was equally told to get a separate laboratory for COVID-19 test, just as it was done during the time of Ebola but this they also turned down.
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