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This is my Suggestion to the president of #Uganda @KagutaMuseveni in regard to #COVID19 response
I would like to thank him for he's quick response to contain and prevent the spread of #COVID19 and for enforcing lockdown measures. Recently @MakerereU
Thread!!!?
I would like to thank him for he's quick response to contain and prevent the spread of #COVID19 and for enforcing lockdown measures. Recently @MakerereU
Thread!!!?
announced that they have designed a low cost ventilator to help in the fight against the virus which we very much appreciate. However, for a country with a small number of patients(47 as of tweeting this) the most urgent need to help accelerated fight against the disease is to
invest more resources into development of real-time testing kits. Kits that give results within minutes of testing. This is because such a move will prevent potential positive patients from infecting others as they wait for their results to be back. This is the situation that
happened in Italy where they were only testing those with symptoms of #COVID19 and by the time of receipt of their results, they have infected many other people. Meaning where u confirm 1 positive case, a possibility of over 100 undetected cases in public is there.
My opinion is that #COVID19 can be cured given the fact that even the numbers of recovered cases is thrice the deaths registered. The reason countries like Italy, Spain, USA are having these high deaths isn't that their health systems can't treat these cases, but it's because
they aren't designed to handle huge patient numbers for example like over 500,000patients in the US. This explains why countries like Italy's curve is flattening. First, the patient numbers where overwhelming on Italy's healthcare system. That's why many died, not because the
disease can't be cured but the numbers were high which made it impossible for every patient to get that adequate care they need to their recovery. To explain this better, look the public figures like Boris Johnson or Prince Charles they got cured because they could access the
care, equipment etc that unfortunately most of the dead people couldn't access. What's the way forward for countries with ill-equipped health systems like Uganda and many African nations. The secret is in real-time testing and isolating the positive cases. We are still lucky
have 43* cases which our health care system can contain (partly explaining why we have no deaths) With the supplementary budget about to be passed, more resources should be allocated to @MakerereCHS and @MakerereU to help in development of cheap real-time testing kits.
The kits are the key to re-opening the economy rather than waiting for medicines or vaccines that experts say might take 12-18months (ignore the time they will take to reach Africa) If these kits are manufactured, they can be distributed to markets, arcades, taxi parks to enable
these places detect positive cases and enable quick reaction without spread of the disease to people. In conclusion, the government should if it really considers opening the economy with minimum spread of the virus, real-time testing kits are the soln
@ProfNawangwe @Sudhirntv
@ProfNawangwe @Sudhirntv
