President Muhammadu Buhari has commended the National Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the last 100 days.

The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and Chairman, Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha, gave the commendation on behalf of the President during a tour of the NCDC National Reference Laboratory, in Abuja.

Mustapha commended the enormous level of work done by frontline healthcare workers in getting samples and results of COVID-19 suspects.

“I’m truly humbled by the level of commitment, the level of dedication and the level of work that I’ve seen been exhibited in this facility”.

“On behalf of the President, let me take this opportunity to truly thank those men and women that have given their time and lives to ensure that in our modest agenda in this response, whatever comes out of this laboratory, the National Response Laboratory here and by extension all the other laboratories across the nation that you have helped to activate, that the efforts have been acknowledged and will continue to be acknowledged as instrumental to the modest successes that we are recording in this response”.  He said.

The SGF, however, urged the healthcare frontline workers to maximise the experiences of COVID-19 to ensure that the nation’s health infrastructure will not remain the same especially in terms of structuring and provision of adequate response mechanisms.

He further called on community and traditional leaders as well as individuals to take responsibility in the fight against COVID-19.

“Our nation, as a nation, must begin to look inward and see what we need to do. Other health challenges will come, what do we do in terms of cure? Are we going to look inwards.” He noted.

On the challenges faced by the Response Team, which includes access to reagents due to the global pandemic, he assured them that the Government will do everything to support them.

“When we started we had 5 laboratories, now we have 30. Managing 30 against 5 is a lot of work”.

“We will ensure that we do everything possible for our people to get good things of life which is their right to do so”. He added.(VON)