48 pregnant women with COVID-19 treated at Irrua hospital in seven months – Obstetrician

THE Deputy Director, Institute of Viral Haemorrhagic Fever and Emergent Pathogens, Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital, Edo State,  Joseph Okoeguale says the health facility managed and treated 48 pregnant women with COVID-19 in seven months.

  Dr Okoeguale, who is the lead obstetrician at the hospital noted that most of the women presented with mild cases of COVID-19.  He added that the institution has criteria for managing and treating pregnant women with COVID-19 and some of the women with mild cases were managed at home.

  “Between June and December 2020, in my institution, we were able to manage 48 pregnant women in our isolation ward and only one of them had a miscarriage, none had a congenitally malformed baby.

  “Hypertensive disease was the commonest complications they had. So, those who had very mild hypertensive disease were worsened at the time they were diagnosed to have COVID-19. For some, there were reasons we couldn’t explain,” he said.

  Okoeguale attributed the success of the managed cases to the dedicated staff of the institution who were caring and hospitable.

  “In a centre where you have dedicated people who are ready to work within the isolation unit, and the surveillance team coming in to monitor their well-being and experts carrying out the regular scan for them, and these contributed to the success we recorded.”

  “Secondly, most of the women presented with very mild disease and that’s why many started asking whether the strain in Africa is different from the kind of strain they were having in other areas.

  “We picked a lot of them that were asymptomatic at the time of presentation. So, a couple of them presented without complications and they responded very well to the common drugs that we used at that time.

  “The drugs we used were approved by the WHO,” he said.