The Bauchi state government has said the daily feeding of each patient admitted to its isolation centres costs 4,500 naira. The chairman of the state Primary Healthcare Development Agency (PHCDA), Rilwanu Mohammed, made this known in an interview with NAN.
According to him, the state Governor, Bala Mohammed, approved the amount to ensure that COVID-19 patients in the state were well fed.
POLITICS NIGERIA recalls that some COVID-19 patients had protested over alleged ill-treatment, including poor feeding, at the isolation centres.
As of the time of filing this report, Bauchi had recorded 232 confirmed cases of COVID-19, out of which 164 had been discharged after recovering. Five patients have died and there are 63 active cases.
POLITICS NIGERIA’s analysis showed that the state government spends N283,500 daily for the feeding of the 63 active cases.
Breakdown
Mr Mohammed said the governor directed officials to make sure that the patients feel at home in the isolation centres by feeding them with N1,500 worth of food per meal.
“It was the state governor that ordered us that we should put N1,500 per single meal in a day,” he said.
“That is, N1,500 meal during breakfast, the same amount for lunch as well as dinner because he doesn’t want anybody in isolation to suffer or complain so that we won’t have any riot like in some other states.
“This brings the total amount of money on meal per day to N4,500 on a single patient.”
However, he stated that he received calls from healthy persons who want to be admitted to the isolation centres because of the “good treatment” given to the patients.
He urged the people to always adhere to all the preventive measures as advised by the government and health authorities in order to contain the spread of the virus.
“Recently, three people called me and they were asking that they wanted to be admitted in isolation centre,” he said.
“One of them was from Giade Local Government Area of the state and because we recently discharged a lot of people from that area, obviously they had given them information on how they were taken care of.
“All these people were pleading with me to come and pick them up and take them to an isolation centre, they said they wanted to enjoy the chicken, eggs, fried potatoes and all the goodies our patients are having while in isolation.”
