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By Johannes Marisa QUALITY health delivery service requires collaboration. In 2007, the World Health Organisation proposed a framework describing health systems in terms of six core components or building blocks. These components are the availability of good service delivery, health workforce, health information systems, access to essential medicines, financing and leadership. Much has been said in our country pertaining the desire to deliver a robust healthcare to the masses. With COVID-19 always threatening to strike further, it is thus prudent that we keep ourselves ready for action so that we are not caught unawares as a nation. While Europe continues to be hit by COVID-19 left, right and centre, the situation in Africa is a little better despite the little resources available. The public health measures that were introduced by authorities paid off with a halt on both morbidity and mortality. Health stakeholders in Zimbabwe include all those who are involved in health service delivery. These include policymakers, health practitioners, city councils, medical aid societies, the donor community, community leaders who, therefore, should come together for the benefit of the nation at large. It is a fact that there has been a lot of dissension among the stakeholders due to differences which have often threatened the viability of the health sector. Surprisingly, some of the contentious issues are easy to resolve. They only need minimal co-operation in order to move ahead. Being difficult does not help matters when dealing with issues, particularly important ones. The following matters have been of concern among stakeholders and it is my prayer that solutions will be found if the country is to make great strides in healthcare delivery: Service providers/medical aid societies feud The friction between service providers and medical aid societies should be resolved if many people are to access healthcare. There are patients that have been denied medical care simply because their health insurers do not want to honour claims from service providers. Some medical aid societies have gone for more than six months without paying a single dollar in this COVID-19 era. Service providers have been left without any option except to demand cash or shortfall upfront, thus putting more misery on patients. Members of medical aid societies should enquire with service providers on when medical aid societies last paid them. Harare City Council/private practitioners food handlers feud There has been acrimony from private practitioners about the way the city health department has handled the issue of food handlers’ certification. Council has claimed that many private practitioners have a tendency of making claims without examining patients, which has been denied by doctors. Council has refused to release medical certificate forms and its officials have gone around restaurants and supermarkets threatening that anyone who has a certificate not signed by council medical practitioners will be arrested. This is very unfair and it ridicules the prof
A November 26 letter from the presidency asked the head of Uganda's national drug authority to 'work out a mechanism' to clear the importation of the vaccines.
China has about five COVID-19 vaccine candidates at different levels of trials. It was not clear what vaccine was being imported into Uganda.
One of the frontrunners is the Sinopharm vaccine developed by the Beijing Institute of Biological Product, a unit of Sinopharm’s China National Biotec Group (CNBG).
On Wednesday, the United Arab Emirates said the vaccine has 86% efficacy, citing an interim analysis of late-stage clinical trials.
China has used the drug to vaccinate up to a million people under its emergency use program.
On Tuesday, Morocco said it was ordering up to 10 million doses of the vaccine.
Record cases
Uganda on Monday registered 701 new COVID-19 cases, the highest-ever daily increase, bringing its national count to 23,200.
The new cases were out of the 5,578 samples tested for the novel coronavirus over the past 24 hours, the country's health ministry said in a statement.
Tuesday's tally was 606, the second-highest ever number of new infections, bringing the cumulative number of confirmed cases in the east African country to 23,860.
Health authorities have blamed ongoing election campaigns which have drawn huge crowds for the rise in infections.
KINGSTON Public Hospital (KPH) is the first of seven health facilities to receive medical supplies and equipment valued at approximately $260 million from the Japanese Government in aid in the fight against the novel coronavirus.The other beneficiaries to receive donations include Mandeville Regional Hospital, Bustamante Hospital for Children, National Chest Hospital, May Pen Hospital, Cornwall Regional Hospital and St Ann's Bay Hospital.
Pending the discovery of a vaccine that will help eradicate the virus, the government in its frantic effort put up 19 response measures that could attenuate the pain inflicted into the population in its entire dimension by the disease.
And to clear the air on the controversy some of the measures must have sparked, President Biya went ahead to clarify why it was necessary to set up the package of response measures which are being implemented at the moment and above all the readjustment that followed.
In effect, the spirit behind the 19 measures taken in April as explained by the Head of State was basically to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on the national economy and the life of the most fragile households.
The encouraging lessons learnt from the response strategy enabled government to take \"relief and support measures for the economic sectors and persons most affected by the pandemic.\"
In spite of all these, the ball still remains in the court of the population that must continue to adhere to the measures set up by government and the World Health Organisation, notably the systematic wearing of protective face masks and distancing.
Vaccines to prevent the deadly coronavirus disease in Tennessee are expected to arrive Thursday (Dec. 17), according to Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare (MLH). Healthcare workers in hospitals across the state will be first to receive the initial batch of 56,000 doses produced by Pfizer. A second batch developed by Moderna is expected to follow. Subsequent […]
Take the government’s modelling of COVID’s likely trajectory in South Africa.
Government statistics are publicly available according to the number of tests, cases diagnosed, recoveries and deaths.
As Professor Landon Myer, of the University of Cape Town‘s school of public health and family medicine, told the Sunday Times an interview, “If there is one massive criticism government, it is a lack of transparency … and details of the mathematical models they are using.
In both the United States Kingdom and in the United Kingdom, where the ethnicity of COVID victims is recorded and made publicly available, it has been discovered that African-Americans and people of so-called Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) origin are over-represented in the infection and mortality figures.
Speculatively, perhaps there is a genetic resilience among African people to COVID, if one considers the admittedly early trajectory of the disease on the continent.
[Lesotho Times] Health workers will be prioritised when Lesotho receives its consignment of the Covid-19 vaccine in April this year Ministry of Health expanded programme on immunisation (EPI) nurse, 'Mamonaheng Posholi has said.
The Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) has denied that it plans to resume passenger flight operations at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
This comes a day after an internal memo by JKIA Airport Manager Abel Godo to officials from the Aeronautical Operational Control (AOC), all government agencies, concessionaires, contractors, suppliers and service providers about the imminent resumption of passenger flights for a meeting leaked.
\"In preparation of the imminent resumption of passenger operations at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, you are hereby invited to a virtual meeting to be held on Wednesday 13th May 2020 at 11.00hrs,\" read the memo.
She clarified that the meeting, which has since been postponed, was meant to put in place measures in case the flight operations resume.
Moi International Airport Manager Paul Wafula confirmed that they do routine meetings internally to brainstorm on the measures to put in place just in case the travel ban is lifted.
Matthew Carter, Jr. is President & Chief Executive Officer of Inteliquent, a leading provider of wholesale voice services for carriers and service providers. Prior to his current position, Carter served in various leadership roles at Sprint. From 2010 until November 2014, Carter served as President of Sprint Corporation’s Enterprise, Emerging and Wholesale Solutions business unit, which provides platform solutions serving a broad range of industries and customers in over 165 countries.
Prior to that, Carter served as President of Boost Mobile, part of Sprint’s prepaid group, from 2008 until 2010. Prior to that, Carter served as Senior Vice President of Base Management at Sprint from 2006 until 2008. Prior to joining Sprint, Carter held a number of senior marketing roles at PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., Leap Wireless International, Inc., Royal Bank of Canada and BellSouth Corporation.
Carter holds a Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe — Experts across Africa are warning that as hospitals and health facilities focus on COVID-19, less attention is being given to the management of other deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which affect millions more people.
\"With COVID-19 spreading, we are worried about its impacts on health systems in Africa and that this may impact negatively on the delivery of routine services, which include malaria control.
Poorly equipped and understaffed national health services in many countries in Africa could compromise efforts to eliminate the malaria scourge, noted Kalu.
Africa must cope with COVID-19 without forgetting malaria
Mamadou Coulibaly, head of the Malaria Research and Training Center at the University of Bamako, Mali, concurred that the pandemic was straining health systems in developing countries.
More action, less talk
While pleased with progress made towards eliminating malaria in Africa since 2008 when the Abuja Declaration on Health investment was signed, Kalu said Africa could do better.
Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization's regional director for Africa, said the organization is training more than 10,000 health workers in an attempt to decentralize their response to deal with these different realities.
In Mauritius, the nation's minister of health and wellness, Dr. Kailesh Kumar Singh Jagutpal, said preparation was key to the nation's response, and its apparent success in containing the virus.
That, Health Minister Dr. Zweli Mkhize explained, is part of the strategy — deputize trusted institutions, like churches, to teach South Africans how to live with the virus in the long term.
And in the East African nation of Uganda, which has yet to report any deaths amid its fewer than 300 cases, Health Minister Dr. Jane Aceng said the health system was already well-fortified by other lethal epidemics.
Moeti, the World Health Organization official who said that cases in Africa remain lower than in other parts of the world, said one thing holds true across this continent: The virus doesn't let its guard down in its quest to survive.
\"Test, test, test\" has been the mantra for defeating the novel coronavirus, but African countries are finding themselves at the end of a long global queue for the chemical reagents and other commodities necessary for administering diagnostic tests, according to public health experts.
Although mass testing is seen as a key component to slowing transmission, African health authorities are struggling to compete with richer, more powerful countries when it comes to procuring the scarce testing material on the global market, notes a new commentary published in The Lancet scientific journal.
Building self-sufficiency
Many African researchers foresaw this scarcity and the consequent need for African countries to be as self-sufficient as possible when it comes to diagnostic tests.
Given the global shortages - particularly the reagents necessary to run polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, which remain almost exclusively the basis for diagnosis - African countries need to take two paths forward, suggests Dr. Misaki Wayengera of Uganda's Makerere University.
But there are only a few diagnostics manufacturing facilities across Africa that have developed RDTs and could work on COVID-19 solutions, acknowledged Dr. Moses Alobo of the African Academy of Sciences, who is leading the effort to coordinate elite researchers across the continent.
[SAnews.gov.za] South Africa has recorded over 20 000 new COVID-19 cases two days in a row, the latest statistics reveal.
