… As WHO hails Nigeria for huge investment on health security***

The Federal Government has called on the British Authority to immediately rescind its ban on foreign travels from Nigeria over the discovery of cases of Omicron variant of COVID-19 in the country.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed made the call in Abuja on Monday at a media briefing on the decision by Britain to put Nigeria on its Red list over the discovery.

The minister said the decision by the British government to put Nigeria on the red list, just because of less than two dozen cases of Omicron which did not originate in Nigeria, “is unjust, unfair, punitive, indefensible and discriminatory.”

Also read: COVID-19: NCDC registers 55 infections on Sunday

He said the decision is also not driven by science and should be rescinded immediately.

“How do you slam this kind of discriminatory action on a country of 200 million people, just because of less than two dozen cases?

“Whereas British citizens and residents are allowed to come in from Nigeria, non-residents from the same country are banned.

“The two groups are coming from the same country, but being subjected to different conditions.

“Why won’t Britain allow people in both categories to come in, and be subjected to the same conditions of testing and quarantine?

“This is why this decision to ban travellers from Nigeria, who are neither citizens nor residents, is grossly discriminatory and punitive,” he said.

The minister noted that the travel ban, the type that had been slammed on some African countries, is “a knee-jerk reaction that could only be detrimental to our quest to most conclusively tackle this pandemic.

He said instead of reflex responses, driven by fear, rather than science, the world should take a serious look at the issue of access to vaccines.

Mohammed said access to vaccines should be based on the principles grounded in the right of every human to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health.

He said such rights should be without discrimination on the basis of race, religion, political belief, economic or any other social condition.

“Many developed countries have used the advantage of their enormous resources or relationship to sign agreements with manufacturers to supply their countries with vaccines ahead of making them available for use by other countries.

“Even before the clinical trials were completed, millions of doses of the most promising vaccines have been bought by Britain, US, Japan and the EU.

“Some of these countries bought doses five times the size of their population, while others, mostly in Africa, have little or no access to vaccines.

“This is the real issue to address, instead of choosing the easy path of travel bans, which the UN Secretary-General called Travel Apartheid. Let the world know that no one is safe until everyone is safe,” he said.

Mohammed said Nigeria had handled the COVID-19 pandemic with utmost responsibility, based on science, and rightly earned global accolades.

He said the country, therefore, did not deserve to be put on any country’s red list.

In the same vein, the World Health Organisation (WHO), has commended Nigeria for its huge investment in health security during the fight against COVID-19.

The Emergency Preparedness and Response Cluster Lead of the WHO in Nigeria, Dr Rex Mpazanje, gave the commendation on Monday in Abuja, at a three-day Technical Meeting of the Presidential Steering Committee (PSC) on COVID-19 summit.

Mpazanje, however, called on the Federal Government to evolve strategies to sustain the capacities that have been built in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic at both the national and state levels.

The WHO lead spoke on the topic: “Leveraging on the National Action Plan for Health Security (NAPHS) for COVID-19 response.”

He said that Nigeria did well in terms of investment in health security, but called for more domestic investment from the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and at the state levels.

According to him, the investments in National Action Plan on Health Security (NAPHS) have been quite commendable.

This, he said, was in terms of the last review that was done on funds that were supposed to be made available.

“It was clear that in the advent of COVID, Nigeria was able to realise most of the money.

“What was needed was about N439 million and based on the review, almost 80 per cent of that money was realized, largely based on the COVID funding.

“One of the weak areas was that it was 30-40 per cent of the funds that was domestic which brings out the issue of different MDAs not being able to factor their budgets to the activities that were in the NAPHS plan.

“There is the need for improvement both at the MDAs and state levels so that there will be more domestic funding that is dedicated within the budget existing in the different MDAs to implement NAPHS plan,’’ he said.

Speaking further, he noted that COVID has been a panacea in as much as it has been a challenge. That was an opportunity to increase core capacities of preparedness and response for Nigeria.

“The challenge going forward will be how best we can sustain the capacities that have been built, especially, at the national and state levels,” he said.

In his address of welcome, Dr Muhammad Muktar, Technical Lead, PSC, on COVID-19, said that government-assisted states in the fight against the pandemic.

He expressed optimism that the summit would review what had been done in the country in the fight against the pandemic and ways of building the bridge on what has been lost.

While noting that the pandemic would not end soon, Muktar said that efforts would be galvanized to prevent the hash impact of the pandemic in the future.

The Summit Programme and Technical Committee head, Dr Aminu Garba, said that the event has opened the landscape for robust contribution by all stakeholders in the effort to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

Garba said that the summit would chart a way forward for the government in respect of the next step of action in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic beyond 2021.

The summit, he added, would make suggestions to the President on what shape the fight against the pandemic would take post 2021.

The newsmen report that the summit’s theme is: “Pushing through the Last Mile to End the Pandemic and Build Back Better”, while the sub-theme is: “Leadership and Governance in Pandemic Recovery and Reconstruction. Nigeria’s Health-Security Framework for Effective Response to Global Health Security Threats.”