CONTRARY to the understanding of many people, Chairman, Oyo State COVID-19 Technical Task Force, Professor Temitope Alonge says hiding when infected by COVID-19 infection is dangerous because the infection can cause kidney failure in individuals with an underlying kidney problem.

Professor Alonge, on the background of the facility upgrade at the Infectious Disease Centres at Olodo and Saki in Oyo State, said although COVID-19 is primarily a disease of the lungs, other organs of the body, including the heart, liver and kidneys, are spared by the infection, especially in individuals with other preexisting medical conditions.

According to him, “the newest addition is the dialysis machine. We discovered that during the Delta wave, a few patients actually had acute kidney failure which could have been induced by the infection.

“We actually lost some of the patients who had acute kidney shutdown because only one of them was privileged to go and have dialysis done in Lagos. There was no dialysis unit in Oyo State that was willing to take them on and after that contracted the Ministry of Health, Oyo state, asking to have dialysis at Olodo.

“So this has been installed because of what we saw happen to these patients and the fact that no dialysis units were prepared to take them on. It is only appropriate for the Infectious Disease Center at Olodo to have full-fledge dialysis going on.

“But we are hoping that the state government will give us a second dialysis machine that we can use for other kidney failure patients with other infectious diseases, other than COVID-19. The water treatment units that we procured and installed can actually take three dialysis machines.”

Professor Alonge said full baseline investigations of patients coming to the State’s isolation treatment centre had also detected individuals with other underlying conditions like Tuberculosis and cancer that were appropriately referred for treatment.

Chief Medical Director, Infectious Disease Centre, Olodo, Dr Idris Fasasi stated that aside from the revamping and equipping of the hospital being part of the Oyo State’s Government epidemic preparedness, the hospital’s bed space had also been increased from 100 to 150 in anticipation of any surge in infectious diseases in the State.

According to him, “we are getting more consumables from the State Government so that we can be able to contain infectious diseases in the State. For instance, at our centre, we have dialyzed two patients successfully and at no cost to them. In our intensive care unit, we have ventilators, infusion pumps, suctioning machines to monitors that you have in any world standard intensive care unit. Our high dependency unit is also available where patients don’t depend so much on oxygen.”