The Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Fyz­abad, is urg­ing Gov­ern­ment to im­prove the qual­i­ty of its re­sponse in the fight against COVID-19.

Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, who is a for­mer chair­man of the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA), is en­cour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to ad­here to the mea­sures be­ing ad­vo­cat­ed by the au­thor­i­ties for pre­vent­ing the spread of COVID 19. He says they es­pe­cial­ly should con­tin­ue to prac­tise so­cial dis­tanc­ing, fre­quent hand wash­ing and mask wear­ing.

How­ev­er, Dr Bo­doe has ex­pressed con­cern that there is a de­lay in get­ting COVID-19 test re­sults, and that there may not be enough test­ing tak­ing place, es­pe­cial­ly in light of the re­al­i­ty of the coun­try record­ing 45 deaths from COVID-19.

“An is­sue sur­round­ing one of these re­cent deaths is the fact that the COVID 19 test re­sult took 17 days to reach the at­tend­ing physi­cians,” Dr Bo­doe points out in a re­lease is­sued to­day. “The cur­rent pro­to­cols ap­par­ent­ly man­dat­ed that this young pa­tient who was sus­pect­ed of hav­ing COVID-19 could not be moved out of the iso­la­tion room in the fa­cil­i­ty for more de­fin­i­tive treat­ment (re­nal dial­y­sis in this case) un­til the test re­sult was avail­able.”

The Fyz­abad MP asks: “Is the de­lay in get­ting COVID 19 re­sults and/ or in­suf­fi­cient test­ing hav­ing an ad­verse im­pact on the out­comes of hos­pi­tal­ized pa­tients and in­creas­ing the risks to health­care work­ers?”

Dr Bo­doe says Gov­ern­ment told the coun­try they were ready and pre­pared to deal with the ex­pect­ed “sec­ond wave” of COVID 19. He says the in­creas­ing num­ber of deaths to COVID-19 is wor­ri­some, as is the in­creased risk to front­line war­riors in the COVID-19 fight—health care work­ers.

“A re­cent news­pa­per re­port spoke of a pa­tient spend­ing sev­er­al days in the ICU of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, po­ten­tial­ly ex­pos­ing oth­er pa­tients and staff whilst await­ing a COVID 19 re­sult,” he ob­serves. “The ques­tion needs to be asked as to whether every­thing pos­si­ble is be­ing done to care for hos­pi­tal­ized, symp­to­matic COVID-19 pa­tients, and to pro­tect the well­be­ing of health­care work­ers.”

The Fyz­abad MP ar­gues that the Min­is­ter of Health and the Gov­ern­ment must en­sure that health­care work­ers are pro­vid­ed with all that is re­quired to take the coun­try through the cur­rent COVID-19 cri­sis.

He al­so main­tains that while the fre­quent me­dia con­fer­ences and me­dia re­leas­es are use­ful, Gov­ern­ment should be dis­clos­ing more rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion that would help cit­i­zens bet­ter pro­tect them­selves.

“Af­ter 45 deaths, sure­ly the pop­u­la­tion is en­ti­tled to know cer­tain de­mo­graph­ics that can guide and em­pow­er their be­hav­iour. These can in­clude the “co-mor­bidi­ties “, and the du­ra­tion and na­ture of symp­toms of pa­tients seek­ing med­ical care,” Dr Bo­doe says. “This will al­low cit­i­zens who have these “con­di­tions “to take greater pre­cau­tions. Sure­ly this and cer­tain oth­er per­ti­nent da­ta can be shared with­out com­pro­mis­ing pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.”

Dr Bo­doe says as many hands as pos­si­ble, as much in­for­ma­tion as can be made avail­able, and as many re­sources as are nec­es­sary, all are re­quired to win the bat­tle against COVID-19.