Isiolo County ranks high on Covid-19 preparedness
The Health Ministry team has rated Isiolo high in preparedness for fighting Covid-19 pandemic among the four Northern Frontier counties.
Speaking on Tuesday, the team led by Prof. Philip Kaloki Chairman, Board of Directors at Kenya Medical Training College, lauded the county for scoring 85 percent overall in strengthening health measures to mitigate corona spread.
The team appointed to investigate and give a report on the rate of preparedness among the four counties, Laikipia, Isiolo, Marsabit, and Samburu counties further lauded the county Governor Mohamed Kuti.
"We are pleased with Isiolo County for their effort to improve health facilities in the region having well equipped designated ten health institutions and isolation centers to handle moderate and critical Covid-19 patients," said Kaloki.
While representing the report to the county boss, Kaloki however urged the county boss to ensure effort are made to reach the 300 beds required counties threshold.
"We got 117 beds in ten major health hospitals across the county but we have purchased more to reach to 300 beds by the end of the month," noted the governor.
The report also established that the county has got two oxygen plants in two major referral hospitals, 20 oxygen cylinders and 8 oxygen concentrator distributed in ten health facilities.
"We are here to assist counties on effective plan to contain and mitigate Covid-19 and to identify the gaps and possible solutions towards scaling up devolved units mitigation and response operations to help the country strengthen health systems to handle patients and curb the rate of losing more Kenyans infected by the disease," said Prof Kaloki.
The County Assembly Speaker of Isiolo Hussein Golicha however claimed some of the religion doctrines of the locals have acted as a barrier in fighting the disease creating anxiety and fear among residents.
"Our religion is Islamic and there some doctrines which we are working hard to create awareness to mitigate the spread of the disease. When someone dies, there is a way of hurrying the burial so we have a team that is working around the clock and doing door to door sensitization to allow county response team to come in before burying any person who has died of an unknown illness," Hussein told the health team.
Kuti further said the county out of good impressive performance nationally on preparedness they have received sh. 120 million from the Kenya Devolution Support Program (KDSP) the money they will use to set up modern isolation facilities across the county.
He at the same time urged the locals to shun from false politics on Covid-19 and support the county and the nation on fighting the pandemic.
"There is a lot of politics and mare propaganda going round on social media and spread by some politicians from this region claiming my county is not prepared to Corona Virus but now the expert have spoken after three weeks of research and fact finding tour, " said Kuti
