Nigerians protest poor treatment in Covid-19 isolation centres in Gombe

People who tested positive for Covid-19 and currently undergoing isolation in Gombe, northeastern Nigeria on Tuesday staged a protest at a holding facility over poor treatment and lack of medical attention including being abandoned by health officials.

“They were chanting that the state government lied about their status while some were saying they were fine. This is serious,” one Gombe resident told journalists.

About fifty of the patients had walked out of the facility on the outskirts of Gombe Town and blocked a nearby highway, causing traffic and prompting some locals to watch from a distance or join the protesters, a video of the protest received by News Central showed.

“Their complaint was that they were kept in the isolation centre without being administered any drugs,” Gombe state information commissioner Alhassan Ibrahim Kwami said.

But he insisted the patients had “misunderstood their status” and did not require any drugs as they were asymptomatic, Kwami told journalists.

Kwami said the protesters were also worried about who would look after their families during their confinement. 

Local residents said they watched the protests from a distance, with the angry patients “ranting” about their plight. 

“They complained of poor feeding arrangement at the facility by the health personnel attending to them,” a local resident who gave his name as Abdullahi said. 

Gombe state has recorded 98 cases of Coronavirus infections since it reported the first case on April 20, making it the region with the fifth-highest official case rate in the country.

“Government should do act before it gets out of hand because the people we saw today are really angry and we don’t know what could happen next,” another local resident who declined to give his name, told journalists.

State authorities have since banned large gatherings, including religious congregations in mosques and churches, and the wearing of face masks is mandatory in public. 

Nigeria’s health system has suffered from years of underfunding and neglect and experts are concerned that it could collapse if cases continue to surge.