TheCable

Chris Bode, chief medical director (CMD) of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), says the institution will strengthen collaboration with Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) against COVID-19.

In an interview with the NAN, Bode commended the NCDC for the visitation to LUTH on Saturday.

He said since Ifedayo Adetifa assumed formal control of the NCDC as director-general, he has applied his enormous knowledge of the effects and monitoring of vaccines.

Bode said the visit to LUTH is a homecoming since Adetifa had his residency training at the hospital.

He recalled the “wonderful working relationship and collaboration with LUTH”, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Many institutions closed up and shut down in the raging days of the pandemic,” he said.

“We do not blame them, the fear was high as apocalyptic predictions were made for the African landscape.

“We in LUTH, however, stepped up to the plate and did our heavy lifting in contribution to the national efforts to contain the disease.”

The CMD said LUTH laboratories first diagnosed the disease.

According to him, the hospital’s Department of Community Medicine actively participated in developing emergency operation centre policy and contact tracing.

He said its clinicians admitted and treated over 1000 cases, most with multiple co-morbidities requiring multi-disciplinary management.

He said that the psychiatrist at LUTH founded the emotional and psychosocial support group, which Lagos state eventually adopted, to provide crucial psychological care for COVID-19 patients and their families.

Bode said that LUTH trained other hospitals and squares from other states on how to set up their own effective COVID-19 isolation centres.