BY ADEYEMI AKANJI IN GOMBE – Some 20 persons confirmed to be COVID-19 positive and presently quarantined at two Isolation centres in Gombe, on Tuesday afternoon went berserk, blocking Gombe-Biu highway in protest over alleged negligence and poor treatment by the State Taskforce.
The 19 persons isolated at the facility situated in Kwadon, an outskirt of Gombe town and another unconfirmed number at the Federal Teaching Hospital, Gombe, almost at the same time attempted to escape from their isolation wards as they took to streets to protest and in the process disrupted traffic flow and other activities in the area. .
At Kwadon, the patients, who started their protest in the premises of the facility, later forced their way to the main road where they alleged that they had been kept in the facility with no attention given to them even as some of them have terminal illnesses which need prompt medical care.
An eye witness told reporters that the positive index cases were chanting that “the government and the State Taskforce on COVID-19 lied about our status and are only interested in using us to make money”.
The protesters also alleged that the Medicare they are getting at the facility was different from what officials of the committee have been telling the public in local broadcast stations with one of them alleging to have a smelly taste that makes them very uncomfortable at the facility.
They also alleged that all efforts made to prevail on the committee members to evacuate the patient to another facility proved abortive thereby making them to live in the risk of more infection.
A visit to the Federal Teaching Hospital, Gombe, revealed that the Covid-19 patients broke loose from the Isolation Ward and were insisting on going.
They also protested in the premises of the hospital debunking claims that the Government claims that they are being fed with half a chicken every day.
In a swift reaction however, a member of the State Taskforce on COVID-19, who is also the state Commissioner for Health, Ahmed Mohammed Gana told journalists that the allegations were spurious, saying that the patients were ungrateful.
Gana said; “They are just manufactured allegations aimed at discrediting us.”
Also speaking, the State Commissioner for Information, Alhaji Ibrahim El-Hassan Kwami, while responding to the claim by the patients in the Kwadon isolation centre that they were isolated while their families were not being taken care of said that, “it is unreasonable. It would have been more reasonable if they talked about their personal welfare, not family, they have gone too far in that regard”.
All said and done, the protest opened a fresh crisis based on the fact that that in the process of the protest, the patients mingled with many people who came to witnesses what was going on and causing a hold up of vehicles on the Gombe-Biu highway which may likely result in more positive cases.
