Ghanaians have by a circular from the health authorities been notified about a gratis drive-in COVID-19 test arrangements for all citizens, save travelers who must pay a fee for the service.
Following the good announcement, many questions were posed about the private facilities which will partake in the arrangements. With time, such rough edges will be smoothened out.
It is encouraging that government has decided on this line of action as a means of augmenting the testing regime during these COVID-19 times. By the time the gratis testing regime is fully functional, Ghana would have scored a first in the West African sub-region to embark upon the ambitious health service. She would have secured a science and data driven management of a stubborn virus.
Testing is a critical anchor of COVID-19 management across the world, and as the Ethiopian World Health Organisation (WHO) chief, Dr. Tedros Adhanon Ghebreyesus while speaking about the virus in its early days of worldwide spread said “testing, testing and testing” was the best response to the pandemic. Without determining how many persons have been infected, a treatment regime cannot be as efficient as it should be.
It stands to reason therefore that the integrity of COVID-19 should be bereft of blemish. Any deliberate attempt by anybody to seek to reduce the quality of a testing regimen in whatever form, same must be resisted by any means possible.
The heartwarming announcement about a gratis COVID-19 testing regime comes against the backdrop of a recent probe into allegations of questionable test results by the respectable and renowned Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR).
At the time the probe was announced by the foremost medical research entity in the country, we were excited because we saw in it an opportunity to determine the veracity of the allegation and to take the necessary punitive action against those responsible if that was the case.
The allegation was about some staff of the institution allegedly issuing negative COVID-19 results to positive prospective travelers, an outlandish charge by all standards.
A few weeks have passed since the announcement about the probe, and we as Ghanaians the stakeholders are yet to be fed with the outcome of the investigations.
We are proud about our own NMIMR and so would fight tooth and nail when its integrity is treated the way it was on social media.
Our worry is that it has taken too long for the outcome to be made public.
By this commentary, we are requesting that the institution expedites action in releasing the results of the probe and the punitive action lined up for those involved in the malfeasance if that is the case. Should the allegation be baseless, we demand that those behind the allegation be subjected to appropriate comeuppance. We are standing by.