Wakiso district health team tracking COVID-19 suspects

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Wakiso District Health Team is swiftly moving to contain the likely outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in the district as confirmed cases in the country jumped to 33.

Due to high concentrated population, Wakiso is earmarked as one of the areas at high risk with many of the recently confirmed cases hailing from there.

Emmanuel Ddamba, District Senior Health Environment Officer notes that the district has set up eight epidemic and disaster rapid response teams to track all COVID – 19 suspects and also accessing the travel and contact history of people who have tasted positive.

“Our officers are already in the field working. They have reached out to a place where some of those who tested positive came from. However, many of them have been found in the communities and leaving with their families and so this makes the scope of our work so big,” says Ddamba.

Dr. David Ssekabogo, the deputy District Health Officer, notes the district has come up with an action response plan on how the district intends to handle the matter. He notes that first all, they had to develop operational guidelines for all health centers.

“The health units be it private or public are at a high risk as and so we have set up guidelines for them. We have banned crowds at Outpatient departments. We have introduced a card system where clients are given cards instead of scattering in the compound at the facility,” Ssekabogo observes.

The district has also put all health units on standby to apply Infection Prevention Cautions as they handle all clients and ensuring that all surfaces and equipment are always sanitized and also setting up an isolation area where suspected cases can be handled from.

Dr. Ssekabogo, notes that the district has already had training for all lavatory technicians and epidemic responses focal person on how to collect the sample from suspects. “We have received all the logistical support Uganda virus research institute and this has made our job easy. So far we have collected samples from over 100 people whom with have been tracing,” he noted.

Some of the tested cases have been found positive but the medical office has refused to disclose the numbers saying that such the district team is still analyzing the said data.

Tentatively, the district has banned the involvement of village health teams – VHT members towards epidemic response. VHTs have been focal in surveillance and management of outbreaks and recently they were equipped on how to handle Ebola outbreak.

However, Dr. Ssekabogo explains that although the VHTs have been playing a vital role in the health system at this moment that be another loophole in the system as they tend to move house to house thus posing a great risk of spreading the virus if at all one of the home has an infected person.

He further stresses that they also came up with an idea of having a public address van and community megaphones (ebizindalo) to keep delivering accurate information to the communities amid a lot of misinformation which is currently going on more so via social media.

Since meetings and gatherings have been banned yet they are key in strategizing, Wakiso is to communicate to all health officers using the mTrac system which is a government-led digital initiative that aids transferring of Health Management Information System (HMIS) data via mobile phones.

The said system has already been used to speed up the transfer of HMIS Weekly Surveillance Reports covering disease outbreaks and medicines and providing a mechanism for community members to report on service delivery challenges.

Despite the laid out initiatives, Dr Mathias Lugolobi, the district health officer, notes that there is panic among health workers since there are no protective gears at their disposal putting them at risk.

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