Nigerians have been advised to take necessary steps to prepare themselves for the challenges that lie ahead in the post-COVID-19 era.

Dr Arun Balaganga, a specialist on precision medicine, who made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), warned that the post-coronavirus era would be another trying time for the world economy.

Balaganga said that most economies of the world would be confronted with recession, loss of jobs and other negative experiences.

He urged Nigerians to channel their efforts to food production and manufacturing to be able to overcome the impending challenges.

“The post-coronavirus era is not going to be easy because there has been very serious economic slowdown all over the world and it may cause inflation, loss of jobs and shutdown of small organisations.

“So, during this lockdown and social distance, equip yourself with new skills, stay healthy, stay fit, prepare yourself to be more self-reliant whether in food production or manufacturing; try to reduce import as much as possible”.

“Also, try to use ingenuously developed product and services, practice healthy lifestyle. Nigerians should move from point of treatment seeking behaviour to health seeking behaviour”.

“Because of Covid-19, a lot of other business and conditions have been neglected; everybody is running behind Covid-19. What happens to cancer patients? what happens to patients who need surgery? all have been abandoned.

“So, we should fight this infection as much as possible; the earlier we hit it hard the better for the world so that we can concentrate on other aspects as well,” Balaganga said.

Balaganga, Managing Director, Indian International Healthcare Centre, Abuja, further told NAN that the hospital had introduced an online free remote healthcare platform to help patients with other ailments access medical care.

He said that the platform was necessary to help patients abandoned in different hospitals because of the attention given to coronavirus.

“Currently, all the deaths are mostly considered as the Covid-19 death even if the patient died of diabetes or cancer.

“What I am saying is that we should concentrate on other aspects as well; COVID-19 should not prevent the handling and maintenance of current patients.

“That is the reason why we introduced the remote healthcare platform so that people can call for follow up and continuously get in touch with their doctors and get their advice from any hospital.

“The remote healthcare platform is like your Facebook or any social media platform where you just log into our website and sign up for free as a patient and you can actually get in touch with a doctor.

“The telemedicine platform is not free, but because of the current situation, we have made the service free,” he said.

He also said that Nigerian doctors abroad could register with them for free and also give out their services for free to help patients.

“In fact, we have made that system open to any hospital to join the platform to provide the services; our service can be accessed from any part of the world through https://iihnl.cartonhealth.com.” (NAN)