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Lira, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The COVID-19 taskforce in Lira has resorted to treating patients from their respective homes after the only treatment centre in the region became congested. The treatment centre with a capacity of only 20 patients has now admitted 35.
Eight people who have recently tested positive for the virus are now being treated from their homes. The eight include of two staff of Centenary Bank in Lira, two from Mt. Meru, three from Lira district local government and one staff of Lira University.
Initially, the taskforce had resolved to have other treatment centres at Lira University Teaching Hospital, PAG health centre IV and Amach health centre IV. However, it has been realized that the three facilities cannot host treatment centres due to their infrastructural designs.
The three facilities will now be used to handle emergency medical and surgical cases which could have been managed at the regional referral hospital.
Dr Edmond Acheka, the assistant DHO in charge of maternal and child health who is currently heading the COVID-19 treatment centre says with the current upsurge in the number of cases, the taskforce has no option but treating the new cases from home.
“We have these other people who are positive but are being kept at home simply because we have nowhere else to take them,” he told URN. “When we go there, we talk to the family members, organize them and make them understand that they can be easily infected so they have to take care of themselves and those assessments are done before somebody is allowed to have treatment at home.”
Dr Acheka was however quick to clarify that only asymptomatic cases are being treated from home.
“Symptomatic cases we take them straight to the treatment centre because you find some who have already developed difficulty in breathing and they may need oxygen so we are only treating asymptomatic cases from home, but we tell them when they experience any signs and symptoms that need attention they should call immediately.”
According to Acheka, the biggest challenge in managing coronavirus in the district is lack of testing kits. He explained that they have been able to only take 48 samples for testing this week and a requisition of about 1000 sample collection kits from the Ministry of Health has been made.
“We have people calling us for testing but we cannot do it because of lack of sample collection kits so we are advising the primary contacts of any positive case to do self-isolation.”
As of today, Lira quarantine centre is closed because the district cannot provide the food required for feeding those to be under institutional quarantine. All suspected COVID-19 cases are undergoing self-isolation.
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