Impact of Delta Plus Diagnostics on Natives of Delta State and its Environment

Executive: Enefeazu Frank Ebele, Laboratory Manager at Delta Plus Diagnostics

OVERVIEW

ND Western is focused on improving its energy commitment to Nigeria and beyond, by boosting its current exploration and production activities to a fully grown asset. The organization boasts of expertise in the retail, commercial, and industrial distribution of refined petroleum and gas products.

The medical facility, called Delta Plus Diagnostics, is a corporate social initiative of ND Western, the Independent Petroleum Producers Group and the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company Limited, a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited.

In this chat with Enefeazu Frank Ebele, Laboratory Manager at Delta Plus Diagnostics, he discusses the impact of Delta Plus Diagnostics, looking at how the initiative has been of benefit to people living in Delta State and its environs.

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Question 1: Can you tell us a bit about Delta Plus Diagnostics and those behind it?

Delta Plus Diagnostics is a medical diagnostics laboratory. It is a corporate social initiative of ND Western, the Independent Petroleum Producers Group (IPPG), and the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company Limited (NPDC), which is being operated by Katchey Laboratories Limited. We are committed to providing the most reliable, convenient, friendliest COVID-19 and blood testing service with other critical medical diagnostic services to Hospitals, HMOs, Corporations, Individuals, etc. in Warri and its surrounding environment. The laboratory is highly equipped to support the medical research community in the South-South and the neighboring states as well as reduce the need to travel for long distances to access critical diagnostic services such as the facility provides.”

Question 2: What other benefit does Delta Plus Diagnostics offer?

Although Delta Plus Diagnostics is committed to providing medical diagnostics services to Hospitals, HMOs, corporations, and individuals; we also realize the importance of research in advancing diagnosis, therapeutics, and development of vaccines. So, in-house, we would be carrying out different clinical research and publishing research journals to contribute to existing scientific knowledge about diseases of public health importance.

Question 3: What initiatives has Delta Plus Deployed to reach out to people in the grassroots?

Just recently we carried out a Free Medical outreach, which was aimed at giving back to the community by providing free medical services and exposing the laboratory to the public domain. In addition, we give health talks to the community which was also aimed at maintaining and improving the masses’ health and enhancing individual decisions when it comes to health matters.

Question 4: Since its inception, Delta Plus was designed to provide Covid-19 and blood testing services to the people of Delta State. Can you talk about your innovation-first strategy in the State and the outlook for the future?

The laboratory was initially set up to assist The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control to decentralize Covid-19 testing and increase the testing capacity for Covid-19 in Delta

state. As we all know Covid is gradually dwindling, but the lab is positioned to offer similar support for testing other diseases that are of global threat.

Question 5: What challenges does the center face in meeting its goals and objectives?

The challenges we are facing are not different from what an average start-up business encounters in Nigeria, but we are crushing them. The good thing about these challenges is, that they are helping us to grow stronger and position ourselves for better services to the community, state, and country at large.

Question 6: Asides from providing services such as Covid-19 and blood testing, what other services does Delta Plus provide?

We offer Blood Banking Services to ensure that donated blood and blood product are safe for transfusion. In addition, we offer biobank, which allows for long-term storage of samples to maintain their integrity for research purposes.

Question 7: Looking at the next five years in Nigeria, what is the future like for the health sector, and what level of advancement do you expect the sector in Nigeria to have achieved?

Going by the current situation of Nigeria, one will be tempted to be pessimistic concerning the future of our health sector but, the scale-up of COVID-19 diagnostics suggests that it is possible to rapidly improve the health sector, therefore I see a greatly improved Nigerian health sector in the next five years.

Given the lesson learned from the Covid-19 pandemic, which laid bare the inability of the public health system to confront new pathogens with threats to human health, I expected the health sector in Nigeria to have implemented enhanced research and data systems, as well as set national standards for the digitization of health records (building on existing systems such as District Health Information System version 2, the Surveillance Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System, and the National Health Logistics Information System), to improve preventive and curative care, support decision making, and guide system management at all levels.