Congo expects new equipment to fight Coronavirus

14 Mai 2020

Brazzaville, Congo, May  14  (Infosplusgabon) - Congolese Minister of Health and Population, Jacqueline Lydia Mikolo, announced on Thursday in Brazzaville, the arrival in the coming days, of new equipment to increase the national screening capacity for Coronavirus , after an interview with officials of the Senate Health Commission.

The equipment will be made available to the cities of Brazzaville, Pointe-Noire and others in central and northern regions to bring the national screening capacity to 1,500 tests per day compared to 400 tests currently.

Thanks to this equipment, results will be available one hour on average after the test against three to four days today.

With the acquisition of the equipment, the Congolese government aims, in the medium term, to carry out more than a million tests.

''We have experienced malfunctions because with the moment when the pandemic occurs, Congo is not capable, by its technical platform, of detecting the Coronavirus. We had to work in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other partners to upgrade the National Public Health Laboratory. Today, Congo has validated three laboratories and is currently training staff capable of diagnosing the pandemic. We started from scratch to reach the current level, '' said  Mikolo.

As for the therapeutic protocol used in hospitals requisitioned to treat the sick, she declared: ''We use and this is not a secret, that of Pr Didier Raoult with its three molecules including chloroquine. However, self-medication should be avoided. This protocol cannot be effective without medical control.''

The Congolese minister  has also invited people with symptoms of the disease to go to health facilities for early treatment. According to her, Congo has 341 confirmed cases of COVID-19 including 74 cured and 11 deaths.

FIN/ INFOSPLUSGABON/SDC/GABON2020

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