'Missing' Chinese doctors found after PDP's threat

By Dansu Peter 

A 15-man Chinese medical team which the health minister, Osagie Ehanire said he did not know their whereabouts has been found. 

A new report according to Punch Newspapers says the foreign doctors are lodged in a hotel in Abuja. 

The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, had said during a briefing by Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 that he did not know the whereabouts of the Chinese visitors, stressing that they were not guests of the Federal Government but that of the construction company.

But shedding light on the situation,  Executive Director, CCECC, Mr Jacques Liao revealed that the Chinese medical personnel are still lodged in a hotel in Abuja. 

Liao said they were supposed to spend one month in the country out of the three-month visas which they were issued. 

 He said, “They (Chinese medical team) are waiting for their flight and this depends on when the airspace would be opened. You know, they came by a charter flight because of the personal protective equipment and other medical materials they brought, but they can’t go back by charter flight, so they are waiting for regular commercial flights.

“They are still here (in Abuja) and they would still assist the Ministry of Health anytime they require their assistance.”

Recall the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has given the Federal Government a 48-hour ultimatum to state the whereabouts of the Chinese medical team brought in purportedly to assist in the fight against the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.

 

In a statement released by its spokesperson Kola Ologbondiyan, PDP said its position is predicated on the alarming declaration by the Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, that he cannot account for the whereabouts of the Chinese doctors who were brought into the country from the epicenter of the pandemic, despite repeated warnings and disapprovals by medical experts and professional bodies.

The party said the minister’s statement had heightened apprehensions in the public space that the ''APC-led Federal Government is being economical with the truth, with its officials playing politics with the lives of citizens and health safety of the nation.''