Highlights Of The Response Of The Honourable Minister Of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire At The Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 Press Briefing of Tuesday, 19th May, 2020.
Advisory on sanitizers:
“Thank you very much, I want to start by using the opportunity to give advisory on sanitizers, you will see a lot of sanitizers out in the market and a study carried out by d research institutions of the Federal Ministry of Health has shown that not all of them are up to standard, so in buying sanitizers, there is an advisory that must be shared and you must look first of all for the NAFDAC registration number, it should have a NAFDAC number.
Secondly, it should have a place where the ingredients are displayed; and amongst these ingredients, you must see that it contains at the least, 60% alcohol; so if it is anything different from that, that sanitizer is not going to do the job you think it's doing, so look for the label, the ingredients will be displayed. If there are no ingredients displayed it is not for you; and in the ingredient, you will see minimum of 60%, and usually it can be up to 70, 70% is good, so that is the advisory.”
On health workers who have recovered after treatment:
“As for the question of health workers generally, those who have recovered after the treatment are monitored for 14 days, in which there would generally, they will be recovering from the strain of hospitalization and many of them will want to go to work, but I think since many are privately engaged, how they actually go to work is not monitored as such, but they are advised to report if they have any problems.”
On the age distribution of patients infected by COVID-19:
“I can get you the figures if you like, from Ministry of Health containing the age group and circumstances in some cases, so that you can have a clearer picture it's quite a bit of data, I can get that to you at the next visit.”
On what FMoH is doing to pre-empt the rush to procure Hydroxychloroquine as possible drug for treating COVID-19:
“I think the other question was about Hydroxychloroquine, first we do not at any time support self-medication and if you've heard that any person is taking medication of any type it's obviously something prescribed by his doctor. There are medicines that normally should not be in your hand unless it was prescribed by a doctor, there are medicines called OTC - Over The Counter, you can buy them yourself as in Panadol, Aspirin, any kind of drug anything for cough, OTC medicines, you can buy over the counter. There are also prescription medicines which you should not have unless a doctor has prescribed it. But here, where people can buy almost what they want, is not recommended, I don't recommend that you take anything except your doctor has prescribed it for you. As I said before there is a study being done on the efficacy of some drugs; about five centres in our country, Hydroxychloroquine is one of them; when the results come out, we will share with you. But again stay with what your doctor has prescribed, do not start self-medicating; do not become a doctor for yourself, otherwise you can do serious harm to your own self. It was reported that some people did harm to themselves when they started taking Chloroquine in Lagos on information that Chloroquine was going to help, so I think that is all that concerns the health sector;
Thank you.”
Compilation by Blessing Efem,
For: Director, Information, Media & Public Relations,
FMOH.
