Few weeks after American President, Donald Trump expanded and implemented its administration’s travel ban on certain countries of the world, especially African, under his Executive Order 13769, he seemed to have made a swift U-Turn, yesterday, as he was coerced to throw his country’s border open in search of international doctors to help contain the dreaded COVID-19 ravaging his citizens and health workers, OBSERVERS TIMES.
Due to the impact of the Virus on the country, Trump’s administration is calling on medical doctors across the world and offering US Visas to interested international doctors to man the country’s Intensive Care Units to be able to stem down the devastating effect of the Virus in his country.
Sequel to this, Sunday Telegraph sampled the opinion of some Nigerian medical practitioners to determine if they would be ready to accept the offer, but none of them who spoke to our correspondent was ready to do so rather, saying many of their colleagues in US have died attending to patients with Coronavirus.
For a consultant Surgeon in one of the top multilateral hospital in Lagos, Dr. Mrs. Okafor Obiora, there is no amount of money she would be paid for her to accept Trump’s offer when the news available said more health workers are dying while attending to the victims of COVID-19.
She said: “I will not go. Even in Nigeria, we are scared of treating them. Many doctors in my office are scared because all the news we hear about the deaths are the medics. You can imagine that every other organisation has closed down but us.
“My family is worried and they keep calling me, praying for me. In fact, my mother use to crying, saying that I’m the only person she has, that I shouldn’t be going to work. Even within me, I am scared but my husband keeps encouraging that nothing will happen to me.
“Yes, I am really scared. So, no amount that will be said to me for me to accept going to US with all that my daughter who lives in America had told me. They have been indoors going to three weeks now.
“Doctors and nurses are dying every day to this case because we are more exposed to the virus. So, I am not interested in the offer. Let them find a way around it.”
More so, the Managing Director, Chidicon Medical Centre, Owerri, Imo State, Prof. Philip Njemanze said the US offer is a dangerous bid which he will not be enticed with, not even with the US Visa.
Njemanze, who said that job hazard is much warned Nigerian doctors against accepting such offer, saying that US is looking for young doctors who will man their Intensive Care Unit (ICU) as their doctors are scared of dying, having lost scores of their colleagues to the virus.
He insist that one has to be alive before thinking of the benefits of US offer or becoming an American citizen or enjoying the money he’s going to be paid said American doctors are not telling them the truth about the true situation on the ground.