This project will purchase 500 face-masks to support rural health centres to be able to attend to, diagnose, isolate and refer patients of COVID-19 without endangering the lives of health personnel and other patients. This project focuses on Muyuka Sub-Division, as the entry point for COVID-19 from the urban to the rural South-West, and from the safer to the conflict areas. If the virus is well contained in this area, the lives of thousands will be saved.
Many health facilities closed due to the on-going civil war, and the ones remaining are giving coverage to three times their expected population. Now they will be receiving cases of COVID without even having access to gloves, masks, or even hand-washing stands. In the process of referring them to bigger health facilities, they will get visitors, health personnel, and other sick persons infected with the virus.
We have identified more than 10 proximity health centers operating without COVID protocols. We will train them on basic Coronavirus Standard Operating Procedures and give them as many masks as we can. Masks are a priority as gloves are more available and cheap. By doing this, we will try to ensure that if a patient of coronavirus goes to a local health center he is diagnosed and referred to a treatment or isolation center without spreading the virus to patients and health personnel.
Each infection we prevent could means hundreds of lives saved. There is no ability to treat coronavirus in the target areas. If we don't do this most of our frontline health personnel will get infected in the next weeks.
