Government News Source, 29 June 2020
The Cross River State Government on Monday disclosed that His Excellency Sen. Prof. Ben Ayade has invited the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) and the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) to accredit the Lawrence Henshaw Memorial Infectious Disease Hospital in Calabar to consolidate the State effort in management of the Coronavirus pandemic and also facilitate rapid testing to reduce the inconveniences experienced by the State when sending samples for testing which takes about 4-5 days for result to return amidst other expenses and delays.
This was made known by the Honourable Commissioner for Health and Chairman Cross River State Covid-19 Response and Taskforce, Dr Betta Edu, accessing the Lab with the 1,056 PCR Extraction Test Kits donated to the State by Stanbic IBTC Bank. She said all necessary arrangements has been finalised and the State Government is expecting the arrival of FMOH/NCDC official before the week runs out.
Dr Edu noted that with the State having such number of PCR test kits with more to come from NCDC which is expected to boost the efforts put forth by the Government in terms of testing, we can now run over a hundred tests within the shortest possible time and the stress of sending samples to Irua and other accredited laboratories will become a thing of the past.
Cross River State is blessed with one of the best reference laboratory in Nigeria, the PCR and GeneXpert Machines in our laboratory that was used for TB and HIV are all very functional and with the latest configuration can conduct over 100 tests at the same time.
The Commissioner for Health on behalf of the Governor thanked the management of Stanbic IBTC for the support stating that it came at a time where the State is in dire need of PCR test kits.
She went further to applaud Cross Riverians for remaining strong and supportive irrespective of the many challenges. She reiterated that Cross Riverians should not panic but rather continue to observe all the laid down precautionary measures while supporting the efforts of Sen Prof Ben Ayade to keeping them safe.
