On 24 May 2021, the AFP carried a story which revealed that at least 115,000 health and care workers have died from Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.
The World Health Organization (WHO) Chief – the Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was quoted in the story to have said this at the opening of the World Health Organization’s main annual assembly where he hailed the sacrifices made by health workers around the world to battle the pandemic.
“For almost 18 months, health and care workers all over the world have stood in the breach between life and death,” he said, calling for a dramatic scale-up in vaccination in all countries.
In Uganda, Sixteen doctors died of Covid-19 in June 2021 alone, according to VOA news. Others remained in intensive care.
Uganda Medical Association (UMA), Uganda’s health workers body, believes that more than 100 health workers have died in the country because of the coronavirus pandemic since March of last year.
Dr. Mukuzi Muhereza, the association’s secretary general, said that number rose sharply in June.
“The biggest bit was the last two weeks when we lost 16. Some people are in intensive care and we are holding our fingers. And 14 were active clinicians and most likely got it from the hospitals,” he said.
The death of 16 doctors coincided with a general rise in COVID-19 cases during the month of June before the country instituted a 42-day lockdown.
However, doctors and healthcare givers have been finally thought about, thanks to innovations and Makerere University.
This, as an innovation by students of Makerere University, could offer a sigh of relief.
The students from the College of Engineering. Design, Art and Technology (CEDAT) have designed a medicine delivery and patient monitoring device aimed at safeguarding medical workers against contracting the deadly COVID-19.
Innovated in partnership with the College of Health Sciences, the device minimizes physical interaction between patients and health workers.
Brian Ebiau, the team lead and a fourth year student of electrical engineering says that the device was designed for quarantine and isolation centres.
According to Betty Mirembe, a fourth year student of telecommunications Engineering, the device can also be used for home care to minimize physical interaction between the patient and the person taking care of them since they (caretakers) are overexposed.
“We want to develop a system which mixes the two timely medicine delivery, while relaying the patient symptom data to the medical personnel. We designed a circuit and a system software and integrated the two to come up with a prototype that is functional,” she said.
Mirembe says treating Covid-19 patients puts medics at risk of contracting the virus and as such: “There is need to minimize physical engagements between them and the patients.”
How it works
Mirembe says the device operates in a way that doctors will be setting the dosage every 24 hours. This, she says, will be erased automatically and the patient gets a notification to take the medicine.
“After receiving the notification, the patient will place the hand and the contact play sensor will detect it and dispense the medicine,” she says.
As they pick the medicine, Mirembe explains that the contact play sensor also takes record of the temperature as the pulse oximeter embedded on to the device measures the oxygen levels to ensure that the person breathes well while asking patients questions about the general feeling. Once the patients respond to the questions, everything is stored on the display card and relayed to the medical personnel through an SMS.
Mirembe says that the innovation gives a chance to the medical personnel to know how the patient is doing and they can come in whenever they feel, which minimizes physical interaction between the two.
According to Mirembe, the device was innovated under a two-year HEPSSA project funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering of the United Kingdom at 200, 000 Euros (98 million) budget.
She says: “We are working on producing a prototype as soon as possible to ensure that physical interaction between patients and health workers is minimized.