Closed health colleges missing crucial lessons

For several weeks now, all educational institutions have remained closed following government directives aimed at controlling the Covid-19 pandemic.

While hoping the closure would be for a limited period of time and that normal learning would resume soon, some schools organised and have been carrying on with studies using digital media.

Ranging from video-conferencing classrooms to text message-based discussions, educational institutions have tried to innovate around the physical distancing puzzle with varying success.

At our universities, we are hearing about attempts to resume some semblance of learning using the same media as primary and secondary schools, although there appears to be little coordination in the matter.

It would appear that the Kenyan Academy was a late and disjointed entrant in the fight against Covid-19, with belated announcements of production of critical medical equipment.

While most of our universities can be forgiven for being clueless in responding to this pandemic, given that it is a new phenomenon that most them have never anticipated and could never have planned for, the inactivity at our health training institutions is difficult to understand.

It makes little sense that as the government set up the response mechanisms and thought through potential interventions, our health training institutions were instead sending students home and closing shop.

The government and technical teams at the Health ministry appeared to be operating in isolation, with little support from the institutions where our medical brains reside.

The involvement of experts from these institutions was mostly on an individual basis, with little involvement of their institutions.

Medical training prepares the graduate to handle all sorts of medical emergencies, and the hierarchy of interventions moves from saving life, then limb and function, before aesthetics.

The overarching goal of the medical profession is to be available and effective during life-threatening emergencies.

The drilling and repeated practice during the many years of training for health professionals is meant to create new habits and ways of thinking that would then come in handy when handling an emergency.

Unfortunately, we are seeing closed health training institutions being used as quarantine centres, and medical trainees are sitting at home asking how they can be of use.

Based on what we knew at the time the pandemic reached Kenya, it is my view that closing health training institutions as we did was not properly thought out.

The greatest fear at the time was that the learners would be exposed to infection in the hospitals as they attended to clinical duties.

Perhaps this might have called for a brief closure, during which the institutions would have worked with the Health ministry to procure protective equipment that would then allow learning to resume.

The pandemic is an opportunity for medics to not only learn about managing a new disease but also to provide sorely needed services at our health institutions.

Academics working at these health training institutions should be leading in advising government on what needs to be done, while continuing to teach and conduct research on this new scourge.

It is time to designate specified Covid-19 treatment centres as advised by professional associations, and to allow regular services with adequate protections to resume at other facilities.

This must include reopening of at least some of the health training institutions to keep the human resource for health pipeline open.

The writer is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Moi University School of Medicine;