By Moses John

A medical Laboratory Scientist, Dr. Ishaku Akyala has said that the fight against covid 19 would be more effective if the federal government decentralise testing centres in the country.

Dr Akyala who is also a lecturer at the department of Natural and Applied Science of the Nasarawa State University, said that himself and colleagues can produce diagnostic testing kits that can be use for testing in all General Hospitals in Nigeria.

Speaking with Blueprint, the medical Laboratory Scientist said it is time for Nigeria to prioritize research, adding that Federal Government should domesticate the fight against COVID-19.

He further said such move would afford Nigeria the opportunity of tapping into the potentials of her citizens both home and in diaspora by coming out with solution in times like this.

He said “we should aso begin to open wimdows for research, for vaccines development. I even told the Federal Government to give us small funds, there are colleagues in the medical laboratory science that can produce diagnostic kit within 7 days that can be used in all General Hospitals.

“It is not a rocket science, we have positive samples from positive individuals, what we need to do is to just harvest the serum, the antigen and the antibody and begin to work on the testing, it’s not a rocket science.

“This is what high school and secondary school children do in China, i have been in China and have seen how they do.

“we need to also see how we can use our local resource persons, we have alot of professors, like Professor Thomboray that handle technical committee on Ebola, this are great individuals.

“In the early 70s, we produce yellow fever vaccines that services the whole of West Africa, we even got the WHO partial recommendation for that.

“So i believe we can open the window and open the frontier for research and what is very important is to domesticate this fight locally, we need to also open the window for for those who said they are therapeutics, they have drugs for treatment and begin to do clinical research or advancement in medical sciences.”

On contact tracing, Dr Akyala said with the use of technology, Nigeria can track down all those there are tracking without stress.

He said governments should employ Geographic Positioning System (GPS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) to track all the contacts of persons needed.

He added that “I have advocated in several platforms that we can use technology to and even the media to be able to track down this people. So all that need to be done is ask the airlines to give you database of all the people that have traveled for the past 7 weeks ago, and people that came from country with high cases.

“Then all of these people have a passport number which is linked to an address and also their phone numbers. GPS can also be used to tracked people to know where they are. So ICT can be used to track people using GPS (Geographic Positioning System) and GIS (Geographic Information System) on the way forward.”

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COVID-19: Virologist, Ishaku Akyala Ph.D Wants Testing Centres Decentralised