Gombe covid-19 patients go berserk over poor treatment from taskforce

William Attah, Gombe

No fewer than 20 persons confirmed to be carrying covid-19 virus from two isolation centres in Gombe, Tuesday afternoon went berserk, blocking Gombe-Biu highway in protest of negligence and poor treatment by the State Taskforce Committee.

About nineteen persons isolated at the facility in Kwadon, an outskirt of Gombe town and another unconfirmed number at the Federal Teaching Hospital Gombe, almost at the same time were reported to have escaped from their isolation wards.

In 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 when some of them had terminal illnesses.

An eye witness told our Correspondent that before our arrival, “they were chanting that the government and the task force on COVID-19 lied about their case and are only interested in making money from us”.

In the process of the protest, they mingled with many people who came to witness what was going on and caused a hold up of vehicles on Gombe-Biu highway.

They also alleged that the care they are getting at the facility is different from what officials of the committee have been telling the public in local broadcast stations.

One of them was said to have a smelly sore that made them very uncomfortable at the facility. They said all efforts to prevail on the committee members to evacuate the patient proved abortive.

At the Federal Teaching Hospital, Gombe, our Correspondent gathered that the Covid-19 patients broke loose from the Isolation Ward and were trying to go home.

According to a reliable source from the isolation ward, they protested in the premises of the hospital over claims that Government feeds each of them on half chicken everyday.

But reacting on the incident, members of the State Taskforce on Covid-19 waived the allegations aside, stating that the patients were ungrateful. “They are just manufactured allegations aimed at discrediting us”, said Ahmed Mohammed Gana, State Commissioner for Health, a member of the Taskforce Committee.

According to the State Commissioner for Information, Alhaji Ibrahim El-Hassan Kwami, the patients in the Kwadon isolation centre were protesting on three issues one of which was that the patients were isolated while their families were not being taken care of. He waived the issues aside saying, “it is unreasonable. It would have been more reasonable if they talk about their personal welfare, not family, they have gone too far in that regard”.

The State Governor, Alhaji Muhammad Inuwa Yahaya, had during a briefing preparatory to the State Government’s response should the virus surface in the State, said the Government had spent over N520 million. This is apart from donations of different sorts coming in from different individuals and organizations. The latest is that of two ambulances and consumables worth millions of naira from the Northeast Development Commission, NEDC.