Ebola: Stop Turning Patients Away, UNFPA Boss Warns Hospitals
Saturday, 20 September 2014 21:19
Written by Laolu Akande, New York
Nigerian Guardian
NIGERIAN clinics and hospitals should not turn patients away because of fear of Ebola, said Executive Director of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) Prof. Babatunde Osotimehin, adding that such could lead to ethical concerns for medical doctors and poor healthcare for sick people.
Osotimehin, a former Nigerian Health Minister, who has just been reappointed for a second term as UNFPA boss explained that the UN agency is now working with its country offices in parts of Africa dealing with Ebola to provide alternative clinics especially for expectant mothers in the wake of the impact of the deadly disease.
Speaking during an interview in New York, the UNFPA boss, who is the most
senior Nigerian official at the UN currently, disclosed that he learnt “clinics in Lagos, Nigeria now have machines that measure temperature, the remote ones that can be carried. So, once you come in as a patient and your temperature is high, they turn you back.”
Calling for a stop to the practice, the former minister said, “the ethics of it is wrong because even as a doctor you are expected to take all precautions and establish diagnosis, in which circumstance you can then advice the patient to go into isolation where they can be looked after.”
He added, “the downside is that those clinics in Nigeria are going to turn back 95 per cent of the people who have chest infection, malaria, etc because less than one per cent of the population is suspected of having the Ebola virus.”
If that continues, he warned, “soon, a lot of people will not know where to go anymore. There is need for better information management and clearer public health policies and more investments. Once these are done we should not have problems.”
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Written by Laolu Akande, New York
Nigerian Guardian
NIGERIAN clinics and hospitals should not turn patients away because of fear of Ebola, said Executive Director of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) Prof. Babatunde Osotimehin, adding that such could lead to ethical concerns for medical doctors and poor healthcare for sick people.
Osotimehin, a former Nigerian Health Minister, who has just been reappointed for a second term as UNFPA boss explained that the UN agency is now working with its country offices in parts of Africa dealing with Ebola to provide alternative clinics especially for expectant mothers in the wake of the impact of the deadly disease.
Speaking during an interview in New York, the UNFPA boss, who is the most
senior Nigerian official at the UN currently, disclosed that he learnt “clinics in Lagos, Nigeria now have machines that measure temperature, the remote ones that can be carried. So, once you come in as a patient and your temperature is high, they turn you back.”
Calling for a stop to the practice, the former minister said, “the ethics of it is wrong because even as a doctor you are expected to take all precautions and establish diagnosis, in which circumstance you can then advice the patient to go into isolation where they can be looked after.”
He added, “the downside is that those clinics in Nigeria are going to turn back 95 per cent of the people who have chest infection, malaria, etc because less than one per cent of the population is suspected of having the Ebola virus.”
If that continues, he warned, “soon, a lot of people will not know where to go anymore. There is need for better information management and clearer public health policies and more investments. Once these are done we should not have problems.”
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