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Lagos, Nigeria—— In August, after a positive case of COVID-19 was reported in the dormitory of the main campus of Akoka, Lagos University temporarily closed its doors.
Bolu, 23, and Veronica, 24, are among the thousands of students whose studies have been interrupted.
Al Jazeera is required to call their students in a pseudonymous manner in their final year of medical school. Until the end of August, they are not allowed to return to the classroom-only if they can provide the school with a negative COVID-19 test result.
COVID-19 testing is free in Nigeria’s public hospitals, but students and medical professionals Al Jazeera stated that the demand for them far exceeds the supply, and the result may be delayed by several days, thus inhibiting public health measures to combat transmission. sick.
There are privately accredited laboratories, students and others can ask for help, but they are not cheap. For example, the cost of COVID-19 testing in a private laboratory in Abuja is as high as 36,000 naira (US$88 at the official exchange rate). In Lagos, private exams can allow someone to pay 50,400 naira ($123) out of their own pockets. The monthly minimum wage in Nigeria is only 30,000 naira (US$73).
Bolu and Veronica said they bypassed the system by paying 3,000 naira (US$7.30) to the repairman to obtain false negative COVID-19 test results from private laboratories.
“I don’t even know [actual] The person who made the results, I just paid my friends who worked in the laboratory, and then I got the results,” Veronica told Al Jazeera.
None of them said that they even set foot in a testing center.
“I just paid and they sent the results to my email,” Bolu told Al Jazeera.
Both students stated that falsification of COVID-19 (a disease caused by the coronavirus that is spreading globally) is common in their campuses.
“Most of the results [students submitted] Be healed. The school did not confirm to the laboratory whether the results are true. In fact, I can write any letter and submit it,” Veronica said.
The Lagos University School of Medicine did not respond to multiple emails from Al Jazeera requesting comment.
But Dr. Bamidele Mutiu, director of the Lagos State Biobank and laboratory expert, insisted that anyone who needs a free COVID-19 test in Nigeria can be tested.
“It’s easy to test in Lagos State,” he said. “The Lagos State Biobank’s inventory of reagents, sampling kits and consumables is sufficient to cope with the ongoing response.”
Mutiu added that although the results were delayed at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, their turnaround time is now within 24 hours.
However, medical experts who worked at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) Coronavirus Center from April last year to August this year told Al Jazeera that it would take three to four days for government-owned laboratories to get results.
“For reasons I don’t know, there is a shortage of kits,” he said. “So, it takes two or three days for them to provide us with sample packages and perform the test. It takes about three or four days for the results to come out. This means that we have been blindly managing COVID for a week, which is meaningless.”
I just paid the money and they sent the result to my mailbox.
Reduce test costs
Testing is a key weapon in the fight against the spread of the coronavirus-including in Nigeria, where more than 205,000 confirmed cases have been recorded and at least 2,700 people have died from the virus.
Experts say that COVID-19 testing is expensive, and not only in Nigeria.
“Generally speaking, the cost of conducting COVID-19 PCR tests is high, and the cost of running molecular laboratories for these tests is also high,” said Chikwe Ihekweazu, former director general of the National Center for Disease Control (NCDC), told Al Jazeera. “This high cost is not unique to Nigeria.”
However, compared with rich countries, Nigeria is even more prohibitive.
According to government data, 40% of Nigerians live below the poverty line. Approximately 20% of Nigerian workers have lost their jobs due to the interruption of the coronavirus pandemic, and the country is still emerging from its worst recession in four years. At the same time, the annual inflation rate of as high as 17% in July is eroding purchasing power, especially for poor households.
“The high cost of PCR testing is not unique to Nigeria. The challenge is the level of poverty,” said Ifeanyi Nsofor, a public health expert and senior researcher at New Voices at the Aspen Institute.
“Most people cannot pay 40,000 naira ($97) for a COVID-19 test. Imagine if you have to do several tests a month.”
Nsofor believes that the only way for Nigeria to price private testing within its population is to reduce its reliance on federally funded testing.
“State governments and local councils must also invest in COVID-19 testing to reduce costs,” he told Al Jazeera. “Excessive reliance on the federal government is unsustainable. It is time for Nigerian health insurance companies to add COVID-19 testing to their list of coverage.”
The high cost of PCR testing is not unique to Nigeria.
Scared to the bone
University undergraduate Pelumi Oteniya was exposed to the coronavirus in August when his roommate in Barriga, a suburb of Lagos, tested positive for COVID-19.
The 21-year-old told Al Jazeera: “The thought that I met a positive person, I really screwed me up because I was so scared.”
Oteniya said his attempts to be tested at a government agency have only been frustrated.
He told Al Jazeera: “The first center I went to was Xiaomolu. I was told that there were no testing facilities. I was referred to another hospital in Xiaomolu and had the same story.” “I went to Arco. The other one of the card, but the waiter there was not interested in conducting the test, only interested in vaccines that were not available at the time.”
According to our data world, slightly more than 2% of Nigeria’s population has received at least one coronavirus injection [File: Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters]Although wealthier countries have the resources to provide millions of doses of coronavirus vaccine to their populations, like many developing economies, Nigeria has to wait in line and initiate a drip initiative through the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility (COVAX) . Therefore, according to our data world, less than 2% of Nigeria’s population has received at least one coronavirus injection.
Ihekweazu said the government has instructed law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute anyone involved in the production and use of false test results.
“We can’t do it alone; we need Nigerians to support these efforts by using only accredited and approved laboratories and reporting illegal activities to relevant legal and health authorities,” he said.
However, if Oteniya’s attempts to obtain free and timely test results fail, then public support may prove to be challenging.
“All my experience [trying to get tested] It kind of gave me a new perspective, what if this COVID is not real? “He said. “Maybe this is just a form of extortion, or COVID in Nigeria is different, because the way you see COVID in other countries is different. “
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