Establishes Biosafety lab . increases PLWH on treatement to 67,763
As battle against drug abuse rages, Lagos State Government has blamed the misuse of codeine containing cough syrup on the neglect of mental health sector in the country.
*Experts say codeine syrup is used in treatment of cough, but when abused could lead to full-fledged addiction that is potentially deadly.
The state government reaction came days after Federal Government banned issuance of permits for importation of codeine as an active pharmaceutical ingredient for cough preparations.
Lagos State Commissioner for Health Dr. Jide Idris who spoke on activities embarked upon by the ministry in last one year, said: “The abuse on Codeine drug and others further show extent of mental situation in the country. And that is why we have decided to place emphasis on mental health.
It is a serious issue. It is one aspect of health sector that people didn’t generally address.” Idris hinted that the state government has concluded plans to embark on an aggressive programme to curtail the use of drugs in Lagos.
“We are not looking at Codeine alone. We are looking at it under drug abuse. Codeine is just one substance of the various drugs currently being abused in the country.”
“To this end, we have updated our own mental health law as against what is happening across the country.
We are ensuring that we improve the mental health law to cover the three tiers in the sector. The revelation on Codeine is a tip of the iceberg.”
Continuing, Idris hinted that no fewer than 67, 763 persons were currently undergoing Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) treatment care in the state as against 64, 554 that were on treatment barely one year ago. Idris added that the state has been able to scale up Anti Retro Viral Therapy from 44 sites to 65 sites, adding that they also upgraded 10 per cent of its Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) sites with optimization of services from Option B to Option B+.
He said:, The program has been able to place and retain 67,763 HIV positive persons on treatment care and support across the state out of which 1,989 persons are on treatment in three Global Fund supported LGAs (Ikorodu, Oshodi-Isolo, and Epe) as at December 2017.
“The above achievement has earned the State GF supported HIV Control program an extension period of implementation of eighteen (18) months.
‘’The programme had been able to counsel, test and give results to 1,125,939 persons.
Due to this, the State has scaled up Provider-Initiated Testing and Counseling (PITC), Option B+ for pregnant women and test and start strategies in government tertiary, secondary and primary health facilities.’’
On the biosafety Laboratory (BSL3), he explained that the Lagos State Government through the Ministry of Health and in collaboration with the Global Partnership Programme (GPP) Canada is establishing a Bio-containment and Bio-Safety Laboratory within the premises of the Lagos Mainland Hospital, Yaba Lagos.
Idris said the establishment of the lab was a fall-out of the successful containment of the Ebola outbreak of 2004.
“The facility would afford the State the opportunity to promptly diagnose diseases of public health importance during routine surveillance activities and during outbreaks of emerging highly pathogenic infectious diseases or incidents of environmental toxicity towards effective clinical management.
In addition, bio-samples would be stored in the biobank section of the BSL laboratory for medical research and international collaboration to fast track research and discovery.
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