Monkey Pox: LUTH and NCDC promises to fight deadly disease
By Olorunfemi Adejuyigbe
The Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, and the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, have pledged to strengthen institutional collaboration in fighting infectious diseases after successfully managing COVID-19.
Part of the collaboration is the building of a 40-bed isolation centre at LUTH jointly financed by the NCDC and the World Bank, the Chief Medical Director of LUTH, Prof Chris Bode said while welcoming the Director General of NCDC, Dr Ifedayo Adetifa to the hospital on Friday.
He said since Dr Adetifa came on board as the D-G of NCDC, he had brought his vast skills on vaccine impact and monitoring to bear while also expanding the frontiers of managing not only the COVID-19 pandemic but also other emergent diseases as Ebola and Monkeypox.
Bode said Adetifa. who had his residency training at LUTH, was returning to a familiar turf as he expressed confidence that the visit would provide an opportunity to further cement the cooperation between LUTH and NCDC.
He recalled the “wonderful working relationship and collaboration with LUTH”, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.
“Many institutions closed up and shut down in the raging days of the pandemic. We cannot blame them, the fear was high as apocalyptic predictions were made for African landscape.
“We in LUTH, however, stepped up to the plate and did our own heavy lifting in contribution to the national efforts to contain the disease,” he said.
The CMD disclosed that LUTH’s department of community medicine was closely involved in contact tracing and was part of the policy making at the emergency operation centre.
He said its clinicians admitted and treated over 1000 cases, most with multiple co-morbidities requiring multi-disciplinary management.
He said psychiatrists at the hospital established the emotional and psychosocial support group that was later adopted by Lagos State to render invaluable psychosocial support for patients and relations of COVID-19.
Bode said that LUTH trained other hospitals and care givers from many states on management of COVID-19 isolation centres while acknowledging top class collaborative research efforts with the NCDC on the pandemic.
