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Bauchi State Government has claimed that it spends N4,500 to provide meals for each coronavirus patient admitted to its isolation centres.
The Executive Chairman of the state Primary Healthcare Development Agency (PHCDA), Rilwanu Mohammed disclosed this in an interview with NAN.
According to Mohammed, the governor of the state, Bala Mohammad gave the approval of N1,500 each for breakfast, lunch and dinner, which accumulated to N4,500 a day, adding that the directive was given to ensure that COVID-19 patients in the state were well fed and felt at home in the isolation centres.
He stated: “It was the state governor that ordered us that we should put N1,500 per single meal in a day.
“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.”
The executive chairman of the primary healthcare agency further revealed that he had received calls from healthy persons who requested to be admitted to the isolation centres because of the “good treatment” given to the patients.
He however urged the people to always adhere to all the preventive measures as advised by the government and health authorities in order to contain 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.”
A total of 232 confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been recorded in the state, out of which 164 had been discharged after recovering.