Buchanan – The chief health officer of Grand Bassa County says the lack of isolation center and medical supplies are challenges the county might face in curbing any possible Coronavirus case or dealing with people currently in isolation.
Dr. Anthony Tucker said that the county health team is worried amid the confirmation of three COVID-19 cases in the country.
“We have people entering this county every day, anything can happen at any time because Margibi and Montserrado Counties are very close to us,” he told reporters Wednesday in Buchanan city, adding that the county needs personal protective equipment for health workers, medical supplies, and another ambulance to transport possible confirmed cases.
“It will shock you to know that we don’t even have gloves for our health works. Sometimes we provide for ourselves because we want to save lives, the county has an ambulance that was just reconditioned by Riders Liberia and we can’t use that one ambulance to also transport people showing signs and symptoms of the COVID 19.”
Dr. Tucker urged the Ministry of Health to “speedily” support the County Health team to join the fight against the pandemic.
“We have four persons of interest now in Grand Bassa County who are under isolation at their homes and we do the monitoring because there is no isolation center in Grand Bassa County for now,” he said.
“We should be taking people of interest to an isolation center but sadly the four persons of interest in Bassa now are at their localities. For me, I feel that it is risky for the county”.
Dr. Tucker mentioned that two of people under isolation returned to Liberia from China and another two from Malaysia.
“Since we isolated those people, our health workers have been risking themselves to collect samples from them while Riders Liberia is helping to transport the samples to Monrovia for testing.
“Buchanan has a sea port and so we as health workers need to be very proactive to ensure that COVID-19 suspected cases are handled probably, although our efforts can’t make any difference in the absence of the needed materials.”
Meanwhile, he lauded the county administration headed by Superintendent Janjay Baikpeh, who recently provided buckets and soup that were distributed across the city.
