Health workers in Lira trained on Covid-19 Rapid Diagnostic Tests

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Lira district has trained 20 medical workers from different health facilities to conduct the Rapid Diagnostic Tests – RDTs for Covid-19.

The health workers are from Lira Regional Referral Hospital, Pentecostal Assemblies of God health center IV, Amach and Ogur health center IV.

The training follows an initiative started by the Ministry of Health in improving accessibility to testing services for purposes of ensuring that all cases are detected and attended to at the earliest stage.

The ministry is considering equipping a critical mass of staff at health center IIIs with skills and Rapid Diagnostic Testing- RDT kits to enable them to perform Covid-19 testing and promptly generate results from their local treatment stations.

Dr Edmond Acheka, the acting District Health Officer explains that they considered staff from Regional Referral Hospital and HCIVs because of their diversity and early involvement in Covid-19 care.

Dr Acheka boosts that being able to conduct RDTs on suspected cases will help in avoiding more community infections.

“The RDT test will help a lot because when someone presents with a clinical sign, we shall use it to test whether or not the person is positive for Covid and this RDT will not only help in early diagnosis but also save time, the turnaround time for results will be reduced.”

Already, two health facilities, Lira Regional Referral Hospital and Pentecostal Assemblies of God health center IV have started conducting these tests whereas the other two are still waiting.

Jimmy Kata Ogwal, the District Surveillance Focal Point Person who benefited from the training attributes this to lack of sample collection swabs for the PCR test.

Ogwal further explained that since the RDT is still under evaluation, there is need to carry out a confirmatory test using the PCR.

Cumulatively, Lira has tested 5,924 persons of whom 424 tested positive. 312 of the positive cases were hospitalized whereas 112 received home-based care. A total of 3 deaths have also been recorded.

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