Diagnostic facilities purchased will help neighbouring Somalia and war-torn Yemen, too – NPC
The National Preparedness Committee, today, unveiled new measures for combat against the COVID-19 pandemic which include nation-wide awareness-raising campaigns, purchase of equipment, and training of lab technicians.
The Committee, led by His Excellency the Vice President, Abdirahman Abdullahu Ismail ‘Zeyli’i’, televising the new measures over national and independent television stations, revealed that the Committee has ordered the purchase of a diagnostic lab including Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machines and that the testing machines will become fully operational within the coming few days.
The laboratory will, the committee tweeted also give a helping hand to neighbouring Somalia and war-torn Yemen if need be.
We have acquired the Covid-19 Diagnostic lab which will be arriving in the coming few days & trained Lab professionals for testing.
Republic Of #Somaliland is ready to help the neighboring war torn countries including Somalia and Yemen in testing the swaps of their patients. pic.twitter.com/zKSl2es7s9
— National Preparedness Committee for COVID19 (@NPCCOVID19) April 7, 2020
“Technicians and health personnel prepped for effective combat and diagnosis are presently trained in Nairobi,” Minister Kahin said.
The Committee also unveiled a nation-wide awareness-raising program designed to reach remote areas and settlements that may not have been adequately apprised of the looming dangers of the pandemic.
Mohamed Kahin Ahmed, Minister of Interior, speaking on behalf of the NPC, disclosed that 187 health and ministry of information personnel, using 62 vehicles are poised to touch every nook and corner of the country to discuss the looming pandemic with towns residents, villages and almost all settled areas as much as can be reached.
Minister Kahin also established that state officials, including the presidency spokesman, Mohamoud Warsame Jama, and the Mayor of Gabiley, who recently returned from abroad completed quarantine periods and were declared fit to resume their responsibilities.
The government of Somaliland, however, has come to a standstill with the rumoured retreat of the President, H.E. Musa Bihi Abdi, to a farm he owned 25 kilometres to the north of the city, the release of thousands of civil servants from duty and the handful of still fully-manned ministries and agencies barricading themselves behind heavily-armed guards against the very public they were supposed to be serving.
The effects of an executive freeze on large parts of the 2020 fiscal year budget amounting to over SlShs500 billion (nearly US$100 million) which would have been spent on projects and programmes positively boosting the market economy are already evident on daily subsistence and market life. Questions as to the legitimacy of the act are also surfacing.
Informed sources reveal that the Thursday, regular weekly meetings of the council of ministers will, starting from this week, be held as teleconferences to, ostensibly, practically illustrate a form of social distancing.
Anticipating the worst, the NPC prepared a number of recovery and treatment clinics in Hargeisa and elsewhere in the country.
We have arranged and equipped exclusive Hospitals for Covid-19 patients in the Republic of #Somaliland. pic.twitter.com/eM7niIFqT2
— National Preparedness Committee for COVID19 (@NPCCOVID19) April 6, 2020
#Berbera Municipality #COVID-19 prevention committee presented a new quarantine center that is fully equipped to contain the spread of the CORONA Virus. The role of the municipalities is very crucial at this critical time. Bravo to Mayor Abdishakuur. #Somaliland pic.twitter.com/1pHObBcxzC
— Abdirashid Ibrahim (@cabdirashed) April 6, 2020
To date, only two people have tested positive but samples of twenty more, according to the NPC, have been sent out for testing and results of which have not yet returned.
The Republic of Somaliland is not internationally recognized one consequence of which is accusingly staring at an international community heaping aid, lab facilities, technical and financial support on neighbouring Somalia and its young leaders for use as they wished without offering the same to Somaliland which in no way comes under Mogadishu – which fact is widely known and as widely ignored even at these testing times.
A significant part of the int”l support – largely unaccounted for as it is – is used to sabatage Somaliland develooment, stability and ti further leverage its imagined claims over the country’s re-affirned rightful sovereignty, as observers claim. Disintegrating the fabric of unity of a ciuntry often called a bastion of peace has become something of an obsession with AU peacekeepers-guarded Villa Somalia since 2017.
