The management of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Ikeja, says it has put in place a Crisis Management Committee and a ‘Triage Protocol’ in screening, isolation and notification of highly infectious diseases.

Prof. Adetokunbo Fabamwo, Chief Medical Director of the hospital told the News Agency of Nigeria that every patient is screened at the gate before allowed entry into the facility.

‘Triage Protocol’ is the process of sorting people based on their need for immediate medical treatment as compared to their chance of benefiting from such care.

Triage is done in emergency rooms, disasters, and wars when limited medical resources must be allocated to maximise the number of survivors.

“We check their body temperature and the instruction is that any temperature above 37.5’C, a medical professional should be alerted,’’ Fabamwo told NAN.

He said that the facility has enough Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for its health workers to assist them to discharge their duties accordingly.

“Our medical personnel have already been trained to take all precautionary measures to prevent, protect against, respond to, and mitigate the effect of an emergency incident.’’

He explained that the PPE was used only based on risk assessment and when seeing patients, after which they are appropriately disposed off into colour-coded bins.

The CMD added that the PPE is not to be worn as part of dressing when not attending to patients.