COVID-19: Patients can demand doctors wear gloves – NCDC

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) says COVID-19 patients have the right to demand that health workers including doctors, wear gloves before examining them.

The agency also said that the patients had the right to demand that doctors should wash their hands before attending to them.

The Director-General of NCDC, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, made this known at the daily media briefing by the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, on Tuesday in Abuja.

“A patient has a right to demand that a doctor should wear gloves when attending to him or her.

“If you see your nurse or doctor going from one patient to the other without washing hands in between, you should ask, as a patient: ‘Aren’t you supposed to wash your hands before attending to me, you just touched a patient?’ Ihekweazu said.

According to him, this is part of new changes that must be embraced in the health sector because of the threat of COVID-19.

Ihekweazu said that Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) should be everyone’s responsibility, especially in limiting the spread of COVID-19.

He said that the NCDC had trained more than 20,000 health workers in the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, in an effort to respond to the pandemic.

Ihekweazu said that the NCDC was rapidly increasing the number of frontline workers trained to respond to COVID-19, adding that the training was focused on IPC.

The National Coordinator of PTF, Dr Sani Aliyu, said that restriction on interstate travel did not apply to essential services.

Aliyu said that agriculture services were essential.

He said that the COVID-19 pandemic would not end in the next few days or few weeks.

He added that government was conscious of the impact of lockdown on the informal sector.

Aliyu said that the PTF strongly discouraged gathering of more than 20 people, except in a workplace.

He said that security operatives were being encouraged to use mobile courts in dealing with violators of safety guidelines.