Stakeholders Asks FG To Subsidize Covid-19 Self-Test Kit

By:  Prudence Okonna

Stakeholders in the Health sector have called on the Federal Government to subsidize or possibly provide free COVID-19 Antigen rapid-diagnostic test (Ag-RDT) kits to ensure early detection and effective containment of the Virus in Nigeria.

They also advocated for proper decentralization of the self-test kits to improve access to COVID-19 testing, Isolation, care and treatment with healthcare systems in low income communities.

These were parts of the recommendations made at the dissemination meeting of the Self Testing Africa (STAR) COVID-19 project in FCT in Abuja, Wednesday.

STAR COVID-19 project was conducted by Society for Family Health (SFH) and the Zankli Research Centre, in collaboration with Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) and Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) among other non-governmental organizations.

In his welcome address, Director-General, Nigeria Center for Disease Control, Ifedayo Adetifa, said the NCDC recommended self-testing kits for Nigerians in May 2022; noting that the project is a step in the right direction to help authenticate the Centre’s progressive thoughts on self-testing.

The Director-General, who was represented by NCDC’s Dr. Lois Olajide said the dissemination meeting is a culmination of the efforts by all stakeholders; adding that the outcomes show the impact on the Public Health space.

Also speaking at the event, the Executive Secretary, FCT Primary Health Care Board Dr. Yakubu Muhammed, appreciated the STAR COVID-19 project team for its resilience in the course of the over one year project; highlighting the importance of self-testing as a major takeaway.

He noted that the project has further enforced the need to improve surveillance considering that the phase of the COVID-19 outbreak is over.

Speaking on the project, Practice Area Lead, HIV/COVID-19, SFH, Godpower Omoregie, said the team did not want to assume that since self-testing was working in other climes, that it will work in Nigeria, so, it embarked on discovering peculiarities that will make the project effective especially in the FCT.

His words: “So we needed to use our realities and experiences to see how we could implement self-testing, by finding out if our people are health literate, for instance if they will understand the Instructions for use on the RDTs”.

Omoregie who also doubles as a co-designer of the STAR COVID-19 project explained that the project involved free testing of use-cases in Primary Health Care Facilities, Community facility testing in pharmacies and patent medicine stores, workplaces, outbreak investigation through community outreaches and secondary distribution of test kits of client testing positive.

He said that findings from the research conducted across the six Area Councils in the FCT revealed that residents were ripe for self-testing as it was highly acceptable by vulnerable clients especially through patent medicine stores.

Omoregie added that over 30,000 Antigen rapid-diagnostic test (Ag-RDTs) kits from four brands were used during the project. While professionals used 23,000, non-professionals for self-testing used about 8,100.