Home-based care good if planned, done well

The government’s rollout of home-based care for those infected with Covid-19 marks a change of strategy to avert a health crisis. Managing a pandemic requires change of tack at every stage.

Realities keep changing as new information and techniques emerge that redefine the processes.

Kenya is faced with a situation where nearly all hospitals and facilities handling coronavirus patients are full. Statistics by the Health ministry show about 80 per cent of those who have been tested are asymptomatic. That means they do not require clinical medicine but management that involves proper nutrition and a clean environment. Isolation is only to avoid infecting others.

UNBEARABLE BURDEN

Having asymptomatic cases filling up hospitals has created an unbearable burden on the medical facilities. The converse is that those in dire need of medical services are locked out while individuals who can survive elsewhere occupy the hospital beds.

Home-based care has proved successful in handling pandemics such as HIV/Aids, which, in the initial days, was dreaded as it killed many people but has in recent years been properly managed at the home front.

Many people living with HIV/Aids live comfortably at home with their immediate family. The whole question is understanding what the disease is all about. Recurrent pandemics cannot be dealt with through in-patient treatment.

Three months since the first case of Covid-19 was reported in Kenya, a lot of learnings have come through. Coronavirus is not a killer disease as such; it is manageable through proper care. Which is why the Health ministry now wants it to be managed at home.

Even so, the ministry has to communicate this message better and convince the public that the plan is doable. Covid-19 is still a new disease and, hence, shrouded in mystery and attracts unnecessary stigma.

BEING STIGMATISED

Communities live in fear of those infected. When families begin to take care of their own who are infected, the threat of being stigmatised is so great.

But the more important issue is capacity of families to take care of the infected. Among the requirements for home-based care is ample space and dedicated family members and who must be properly trained. Not every family has that capacity.

Which is the reason Health Chief Administrative Secretary Rashid Aman announced that prior to being released for home-care based, a patient’s home is surveyed by medical personnel to determine suitability.

Stringent measures are also being introduced to ensure adherence to the guidelines. However, the challenge is execution.

The government requires proper and well-targeted communication plan to sensitise the public about the viability and inevitability of home-based care for Covid-19 patients.