By Olatunji Ololade, Associate Editor

The year, 2020, unfurled like a wild canyon swallowing preeminent and ordinary Nigerians. No thanks to the deadly coronavirus aka COVID-19. But a recap of 2020 would be incomplete without acknowledging the gallantry of Nigeria’s health workers, many of whom lost their lives battling the pandemic on the frontline.

Their work is fraught with peril; they tangle with death and disease and in gruesome but barely acknowledged cadences, news of the fallen filter out to public domain.

Some health professionals have died battling to contain the coronavirus. The National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) of Nigeria, disclosed that about 14 doctors have died of COVID-19.

And in June, the Director-General (DG) of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) stated that over 800 Nigerian health workers had contracted the coronavirus since the first case was confirmed in February.

“We have had 812 health care workers infected, they are not just numbers, 29 of these work for NCDC, they are people I know, they have families, wives, and children,” he said.

For the survivors, however, each new day dawns with fresh challenges of inadequate medical supplies, crowded facilities, marathon shifts, and lack of protective gear or Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

Coping with the pandemic in a country of about 200 million people with an overstretched and underfunded healthcare system poses a challenge to health workers, no doubt.

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At the outbreak of the coronavirus, Nigeria hoped to beat it and reduce casualties by instituting lock-downs, encouraging social distancing and good personal hygiene.

But while these measures seemed practicable in containing the pandemic among the populace, they weren’t enough protection for the country’s health workers; many suffer physical and mental exhaustion, separation from family, and the agony of losing patients and colleagues. Many have also contracted the disease.

In late July, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that over 10,000 healthcare workers in Africa had tested positive for COVID-19, raising fears about the ability of a country like Nigeria, which only has four doctors per 10, 000 people – according to WHO estimates – to successfully control a pandemic that has overwhelmed even better-resourced health systems of Europe and America. In the United States, the ratio is 26 doctors per 10,000 people and 28 in the United Kingdom.

As the pressure increased on key health facilities across the country, so too did the risk of infection for health professionals.

Doctors manage infectious diseases like the COVID-19 as part of their daily routine but are only guaranteed a monthly hazard allowance of N5,000.

Following the threat of another doctors’ strike over the lack of protection for health workers, the government agreed, in June, to provide each worker on the frontline with two-month hazard pay.

In late July, the government claimed to have spent N15.8 billion ($42 million) hazard pay even as health workers lament the lack of health insurance for those who fall sick or die in the line of duty whereas their counterparts in neighbouring Ghana enjoy a US$4,322 health insurance coverage in the occurrence of illness or death in the fight against COVID-19.

Even so, Nigeria’s health professionals remain committed to the fight against COVID-19.

Moved by their exploits on the frontline, Lagos governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, recently honoured 10 health personnel describing them as the “heroes of the season.”

He said, “We will never forget your toil and the risk you are bearing during these very unusual times in our history.” The beneficiaries include an ambulance driver, a security man, a lab scientist, a nurse, a virologist, and medical doctors.

Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub, has remained the epicentre of the pandemic since its outbreak. In the coastal city, health workers have been in the centre of the storm, working with limited resources to save as many lives as possible, while putting their own lives at risk.