Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Mudashiru Obasa has charged the state executive arm to enforce the necessary enabling laws in order to stop the continuous spread of the Coronavirus disease.
Obasa gave this charge on Thursday evening when the House received state Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi and some officials and representatives of 20 Local Government Areas (LGAs) and 37 Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) in the state in an interactive session to restrategize the COVID-19 war chart.
The Speaker, who noted that all hands must be on deck in order to deal with the pandemic once and for all, pointed out that this is neither the time to relent nor take the back seat, just as he called for new ideas to confront looming challenges.
While commending the state executive arm under the leadership of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu for the role it had played so far in combatting the pandemic, the Speaker maintained that necessary laws must be applied in order to stop the continuous spread of the deadly virus.
According to Obasa, “I believe we should come up with new ideas in dealing with the coming challenges. There is a law which we have passed and people must obey these laws. If there is need to amend certain parts of the law, let us do that. People who are infected should not refuse to go to Isolation Centres, they should be arrested, that is why we have the law.”
While imploring the local government and local council development area officials to join in the fight aimed at bring an end to the pandemic, the Speaker said, “As local government officials, this is the time to show action and convince your people at the grassroots.
“This is the time to show them that we can get over this pandemic; you need to give them reasons why they must listen and obey the government because leadership is about showing the way.
“We don’t have to relent in our campaigns and say the people are not listening to us because if we continue like this in the next three weeks, everything will be down and your offices will become useless, there won’t be revenue generation and allocation will seize. So every local government must come up with new ideas to confront this pandemic,” Obasa added.
Earlier, the Commissioner for Health, who briefed the lawmakers on the challenges being confronted by the executive arm in dealing with the deadly virus, disclosed that a very large number of people have been infected with the disease but because they are a symptomatic, they have been going about infecting other people.
“There no established treatment, WHO is yet to declare a drug for COVID-19 and we have capacity challenge for molecular biologist and intensivist scientists, and a patient can spend two or three weeks on a ventilator.
He also noted that the state government still remain a leading light for having commissioned a solar powered Bio Security Laboratory, first of it’s kind in Africa and of international standard, a proactive move to secure Lagosians health far back 2018.
The Deputy Incident Commander,Prof. Abayomi however, lamented the inaccessibility to drugs used in treating those in the Isolation Centres.
“One of the major problems we are having is the access to drugs used in treating the patients. Because the drugs are not produced locally, it has been difficult getting them and because this pandemic is a global thing, the demand for these drugs are in excess.
“Also, we have about 25 ventilators that have not been fully activated because we don’t have the personnel to man these gadgets. For one ventilator, you need about five different medical personnel to handle it. But in a matter of days, seven of these ventilators will be activated for use,” he said.