The governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-olu, and his Oyo State counterpart, Seyi Makinde, should deploy COVID-19 task force teams to urban slums in their states in order to prevent community transmission of coronavirus.
This charge was made by the University of Ibadan Urban Health Research Team.
The team also asked the two states to consider creating access points for COVID-19 testing in the slum communities.
The Head of the Team, Prof. Akinyinka Omigbodun, gave the admonition in a statement issued and made available to journalists in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
The research team, funded by the National Institute for Research (NIHR), UK, carried out stakeholder engagements in Bariga, Idi-Ikan and Sasha slum communities in Lagos and Oyo States.
According to the health experts, the task force needs to the more because the slum communities in question displayed poor adherence to advisories on prevention issued by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, due to the peculiar nature of their communities.
Omigbodun said non-adherence to preventive measures and lack of protective kits such as sanitizers and facemasks could negatively affect efforts at curtailing the spread of the virus, calling on the governors to engage in massive sensitisation as well as distributing free face masks and hand sanitizers free of charge in slum communities.
He maintained that the distribution of palliatives must reach urban slum dwellers who he said had become very vulnerable owing to the lull in economic activities.
The research team also asked that primary health care professionals be equipped with personal protection kits to prevent them from being exposed to infection before patients are transferred to test and isolation centres
“The access and utilisation of health facilities in urban slums is not encouraging. With COVID-19, the governments of the two states need to do more about community sensitisation, supply of palliatives and provision of testing facilities in slum communities.
“We also found that health care professionals are not supplied with sufficient numbers of protective equipment. This is not good enough, considering the crucial role they play in health service delivery at the community level,” he said.
