Health centres throughout Jinja are out of stock for COVID-19 testing kits, a situation that may lead to the resurgence of the novel coronavirus, in the newly created city.
This astonishing information was contained in a COVID-19 home based care report for Jinja city, compiled using data gathered from July 2021, to June 5th, 2022.
The report was drafted after a COVID-19 response and prevention Workshop for health workers, which was organised by City leaders on Monday at the City Hall in Jinja.
The report indicated that there is hardly any testing kits for the deadly disease at all health centres across Jinja city, and this makes it rather hard to detect new cases of the disease.
It was also revealed that untimely supply of COVID-19 testing kits during the second wave and personal protective equipment, (PPE) greatly curtailed the capabilities of health centres to effectively tackle the deadly disease.
“Untimely supply of COVID-19 testing kits and personal protective equipments, which mainly affects testing. Currently, we have no testing kits,” reads the report in part.
It was also made clear that most health centres lack tools for Village Health Teams (VHTs), especially registers and name tags, something which also threatens the health sector of Uganda’s Industry and tourism city.
Among other factors that might lead to the resurgence of COVID-19 in Jinja city is inadequate information campaigns, and poor communication intervention strategies, according to the report.
This, coupled with poor adherence to Information Prevention and Control (IPC) guidelines by community members, also greatly inhibited lack of access to COVID-19 information from privates.
The city health authorities passed resolutions in which they called upon National Medical Stores (NMS), which is Uganda’s central distribution hub for all public health facilities to supply the necessary COVID-19 intervention requirements to all health centres in Jinja on a short notice.
Among other recommendations passed was that the Ministry of Health (MoH) provides VHT’s with registers and identication tags plus PPE’S as well.
They also called for the hastening of rapid response teams, and multi-pronged measures by the ministry, for continuous sensitization of the community about COVID-19 prevention measures.
Important still, they called upon private facilitaties to avail the city medical office with COVID-19 related information, such that intervention measures can be timely and effectively implimented in case need arises.
The Jinja City South Division Deputy Resident City Commissioner, Mike Ssegawa appealed to the Ministry of Health and NMS to urgently respond to the vital need in city.
“We don’t have cases in the city yet, but this is because we don’t have testing kits. With a threatening new wave, we should be better prepared than before to stop the danger to the community by increasing vaccinations to non vaccinated people, carry out regular testing, and of course follow SoPs especially hand washing and wearing masks as directed by the Ministry of Health and Who,”Mr Ssegawa noted.
According to the analysis in the report, the last positive case in Jinja city was recorded on 20th April 2022 and discharged on June 3rd 2022. This is however not to say that Jinja city was completely cleansed of COVID-19, due the absence of testing capabilities.
Accordingly, it was also revealed that the city has only one Regional Refferal Hospital, four Health Centre IVs, Eight Health Centre 111s and 12 Health Centre 11s, with over 286 active VHTs.
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