- The training in Kisumu is conducted in different cohorts that runs from August 29 to September 9, 2022.
- One of the training beneficiaries based at the Kisumu County Referral Hospital, lauded the initiative as a game changer as it will improve patients’ survival.
Image: KNA
Some 75 health workers are being trained on advanced cardiac life support to provide critical care to heart patients.
The programme, run by the Aga Khan Development Network through funding from the European Union, also aims at empowering 15 trainers of trainees.
A cluster of doctors and nurses drawn from various government hospitals in Busia, Kisii, Bungoma, and Migori counties and The Aga Khan Hospital Kisumu are taking part in the training.
Speaking during the training session at a Kisumu hotel, the programme coordinator Dr Kennedy Mulamwa said the initiative also aims at strengthening health system resilience.
This, he said, is to adequately respond to the outbreak of different diseases as well as upscale service delivery to patients who require critical care.
“The programme seeks to strengthen government health institutions and the Aga Khan Hospitals, and to train the health workers on ACLS to enhance and improve the capacity of the health workers to provide quality health care services to patients in their respective institutions,” Dr Mulamwa said.
The training in Kisumu is conducted in different cohorts that runs from August 29 to September 9, 2022.
Dr Eshiwani Patrick, the medical director of The Aga Khan Hospital, Kisumu, while speaking at the same event, said the institution’s five various footprints in the region continue to work closely with other organisations in the delivery of better maternal and health services.
The medical director said that they have been responding swiftly through the provision of the much needed PPEs, testing kits and other medical equipment to address the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Today Covid has gone down, but there is Post-Covid Syndrome which persists for weeks and months among the patients who suffered and initially recovered from Covid-19, and the effects of Covid are still being felt,” Dr Eshiwani said.
He said that the programme purposefully focuses on enhancing the capacity for resuscitation and providing service to patients in intensive care and High Dependency Units.
The medical director said that resuscitation is a costly exercise and most of the trainers are from outside of the region.
“The programme also aims at identifying trainers in a class of 15 who can impart knowledge to other medics on resuscitation procedures and assess them effectively in this region without outsourcing for trainers from Nairobi and elsewhere,” Dr Eshiwani said.
The training is carried out and monitored under the umbrella of the American Heart Association, and upon completion, the successful trainers will be incorporated as members.
"Diagnosis of Covid-19 requires specific isolation, detection of the virus DNA and The Aga Khan Hospital, Kisumu, has a molecular laboratory able to do that,” the medical director said, adding that diagnosing using the molecular platform is quite expensive.
One of the training beneficiaries, Dr Priscilla Munga based at the Kisumu County Referral Hospital, lauded the initiative as a game changer as it will improve patients’ survival.
She said the move would strengthen the working relationship between the public-private hospital patients’ referrals and bridge the medical gaps in terms of resuscitation.
Dr Eshiwani said the Aga Khan University has an Memorandum of Understanding with the Kisumu county on capacity building, where they offer the platform for training, and the devolved unit offers the staff to be trained without paying fees.
Currently, paediatrics and gynaecologists from the county are benefiting from this arrangement which also involves staffing and equipment.
Emily Ogutu, a clinical nurse at the Aga Khan Hospital-Kisumu, said that the training has helped them acquire knowledge, especially in planning for taking care of ailing patients.
The planning, she said, has enabled them to identify those early signs that may lead to deterioration and initiate processes to help and prevent the deteriorations.
“Basically, this training helps know when to intervene and involve other physical care of the patient to save their lives,” Ogutu said.
The training programme is one of the multifaceted approaches initiated and funded by the EU and AKDN since February 2021 to the tune of Sh1 billion to combat Covid-19 among vulnerable people in East African countries like Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda.
(edited by Amol Awuor)