The President of the Nigerian Medical Association, Professor Innocent Ujah, has bemoaned the ineffectiveness of social distancing at combating the spread of COVID-19 in the country, noting that it has failed and new strategies need to be developed.
Ujah disclosed this on Monday when he appeared on a television programme in Abuja.
The NMA President said there was an urgent need for the PTF, whose mandate to coordinate the country’s response to the pandemic was recently extended by President Muhammadu Buhari to scale up its research to enable it to understand why citizens are not complying with some of its protocols.
He said, “The issue of compliance with the NCDC (Nigeria Centre for Disease Control) protocols – the use of face masks, hand sanitisers, and social distancing – is a very big challenge. The issue of social distancing has failed in Nigeria. It is not likely to succeed and therefore we need another strategy, other ways we can improve the compliance to the NCDC protocol.
“Yes, by and large, many people now use face masks but unfortunately when you go to villages and markets, none of the protocols are practiced at all. Maybe the airlines and a few others like the churches obey these protocols.”
He added, “I have always talked about the research angle of the PTF. We need to find out, we don’t need to speculate, we should have gone to town and gotten a quick response and analyse the data to know why people are not complying, and then we will navigate to see how they will comply.”
“The reality is that Covid-19 is with us and we need to up our game. The Nigerian stakeholders, the Nigerian people and the National Orientation Agency must also improve its own sensitisation and communication channels because we really are in trouble if we do not at very quickly.”