Only 200 patients, being about 8 per cent of the 2490 cases admitted on our facilities got from between N500, 000 and N1 million each daily spending on drugs and maintenance, Lagos information commissioner
The Lagos State, Nigeria’s COVID-19 epicenter, has released more details on its up to N1million daily spending pattern for treatment and managment of each severe COVID-19 petient.
Commissioner for Health, Professor Akin Abayomi, has on Thursday, declared during a briefing aired live on Television that the state spends about N100,00 daily for mild and moderate cases, while it costs about N500,000 and N1million to treat a patient with serious or intensive COVID-19 case.
His counterpart at the Information and Strategy ministry, Gbenga Omotoso, who expressed displeasure that the figures released by Abayomi “were insufficiently appreciated and incorrectly portrayed by some members of the press,” released more details on the spending pattern.
Stating that the figure released by Abayomi was done in the spirit of accountability, Omotosho declared that only about 175 patients have fallen into the class of those whose treatments cost between N500,000 and N1 million each on daily basis.
“Of the 13,835 positive cases identified in Lagos thus far (as at Friday, July 25, 2020), about 18% equivalent to 2,490 have been admitted into the State’s isolation centres. Of all these patients admitted – about 7% (174.3 people) were severe and 1% was critical; that is 8% of total admissions,” he declared.
Omotosho continued; “The Honourable Commissioner, in the interest of transparency, offered a window onto the economics of COVID-19 care and, regrettably, some Reporters misunderstood his comments.
“While we commend the role of the press in probing into the application of public funds, we look up to them to be balanced and accurate their reporting.
“It is clear that N1,000,000 sounds more sensational than N100,000, but we must not allow sincerity to be sacrificed on the altar of sensationalism. What the Honourable Commissioner sought to communicate was the range of symptom manifestations of the Corona virus – from mild and moderate to severe and critical.”
He explained that the cost of treating these manifestations vary, considerably.
In summary, he said this about the cost of COVID-19 care:
“Every case is different and it is very difficult to calculate exactly how much managing a COVID-19 patient would cost, but what is clear to us is that when you add up the expenses of maintaining the facility, infrastructure, human resources, feeding and consumables, it costs the government approximately 100,000 naira per day for a non-complicated COVID-19 admission.
The Honourable Commissioner gave an indication of the considerations factored into the costing of intensive care, including ventilation, dialysis, intravenous antibiotics, oxygen and other high and intensive care requirements, depending on the complications of the case.
He went on to estimate the cost of intensive care, which usually requires a longer period of admission, and may range between N500,000 to N1,000,000 per day.
“Unfortunately, certain sections of the press chose to latch on to the figure of N1,000,000 and disregarded the painstaking context that had been provided by Prof. Abayomi.
“That figure was the upper end of a band and, just as importantly, it applied to no more than 200 out of 2,490 admissions, majority of whom recovered. That means the balance of 2,290 non complicated admissions each cost around N100,000 per day,” the statement read.
