PHSK Position - COVID 19 NATIONAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE

POSITION STATEMENT FOR COVID 19 NATIONAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE COMMITTEE:
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15 TH , 2020
PHSK commends the Government of Kenya, the inter-agency and inter-ministerial national coordinating
committee, and the Ministry of Health for efforts to contain the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Kenya in
collaboration with stakeholders and partners.
PHSK acknowledge the situation is complex and evolving; national resources are scarce and finite; community
and individual presentation of disease vary; and final outcomes has included life and death.
PHSK affirms that the two most important objectives of our national response are: i) to modulate infection of the
population. ii) to augment and maintain an equitable reserve capacity of the health system to attend to infected
persons. Special attention to be paid to critical and intensive care services.
WHEREAS, PHSK applauds the national response in the following areas: arresting of disease importation; setup
and augmentation of diagnostic testing; setup and resourcing of quarantine, isolation and treatment centers;
institutionalization of #Masks4All and other standard infection prevention measures; commencement of mass testing;
and health systems approach to increase availability of treatment for COVID-19 patients.
PHSK takes the position that points outlined below touch on aspects of the response continuum, public health
science and clinical care implications that require broader, deliberate, and structured discourse – public and technical.
We encourage national and county response teams to engage the scientific community to address them.
- Protection of the public from access and use of poor quality homemade, locally produced or imported face
masks. Equity in production, availability, and accessibility of face masks across the 47 counties.
- Clarify for the public the interchangeable use of the terms social distancing versus physical distancing.
- Articulate to technical audience and educate public about the operational definition of ‘mass testing’ and the
various pathways of care and treatment of positive COVID19 test results.
- Consider serologic follow-up of patience recovered from COVID19 infection to provide insights to post
exposure immune response.
- Clarify the place for community health strategy 1 in implementation of the community mass testing for
COVID19.
- Clarify role of health informatics solutions and immediately implement health informatics interventions to
provide the intelligence required to target and equitably ration ‘mass testing’ resources to maximize impact.
- Adopt and publicly announce a national network of specialized health facilities equipped and resourced to attend
to patients who require critical and intensive clinical care services.
- Review and update the profile of human resource surge capacity required for optimal COVID19 response
workforce to include: Community health services personnel 2 , Physiotherapists, enrolled community health nurses
- Establish and ensure availability and accessibility of standard and specialized care and treatment services for all
health care workers in the frontline who contract COVID19 while in the line of duty. To include possible
prophylaxis therapy proven to confer protection or disease modulation.
PHSK will play her civic duty to educate the public and be the neutral convener for debates around the science to
inform policy – real time.
Dr Teresa Kinyari
Chairperson
Dr Martin Osumba
Secretary
+254 707028067 +254 722 791 787
1
Strategy for community health 2014 – 2019, MOH Kenya. Accessed here
2
Scheme of service of community health services personnel, November 2013. Approved by PSC and DPM. Accessed here
Chair-person Vice Chair-person Secretary Vice Secretary Treasurer Vice Treasurer Patron
Dr Teresa Kinyari Prof Stephen Okeyo Dr Martin Osumba Dr Isabel Maina Diana Ruchungo Dr Rael Mutai Prof Miriam Were