By Dennis Agbo

FOLLOWING the reported death of a woman who was suspected to have contracted Coronavirus, but later tested negative to the pandemic, the Enugu state government has locked up the Colliery Hospital isolation center Enugu, where the woman was isolated before she died.

Police men were used to lock up the hospital and turned people away from entry into the hospital.

A civilian security man at the hospital told Vanguard that “Government House sent policemen in the morning to bar people from gaining entrance into the hospital.”

Colliery hospital was founded by the colonial masters as a hospital coal mine workers. It was long abandoned and dilapidated until Enugu state government bought the facility in 2012 from the Bureau for Public Enterprise, BPE that auctioned it for sale.

The facility was first designated as isolation center when Ebola outbreak was reported in Enugu state.

The 70 year old woman who was suspected to have Coronavirus was reportedly isolated in the facility until her result was made public.

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Daughter of the woman had raised the alarm that her mother died because of poor state of the facility where she was isolated and for lack of treatment and stigmatization before she tested negative to the pandemic.

All the state government officials contacted to make comment on the allegation either refused to pick their phone numbers, failed to respond to text messages and were even absent in their offices.

A Doctor at the Enugu State University Teaching Hospital Parklane, ESUTH, who pleaded to be anonymous, told Vanguard that the suspected woman was not admitted as a patient at the Parklane hospital and died because of lack of treatment on her at the isolation center even when she did not have coronavirus.

The Doctor said: “She is a known hypertensive woman that had typhoid separation. She died of it and typhoid separation is an emergency. The Woman died at the isolation centre, how can you take somebody in that place, have been there? Try and go there even though the police will not allow you inside. If you go there as healthy person, you will immediately become sick.

“In the first place, she was not a patient in parklane hospital. She was rushed to UNTH (University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital) for an emergency but the UNTH reject her because she came from UK and they now brought her to parklane but before she came to parklane, the parklane already had the information and called the Ministry of Health that they have a Coronavirus suspect.

“They only wanted to use her to make money and asked for logistics to move her to Colliery (isolation center). I don’t blame them because she came from Uk and that was why they started running, but then you have to also give somebody treatment first. COVID did not start today and we were all supposed to be prepared so that when you see a suspect, you put on the attire and attend to the patient, but not to attend to the patient at all.”

Vanguard