By Dr. Prossy Namaganda,

Last week ROM staff completed the COVID-19 training, conducted by the Infectious Diseases Institute in conjunction with Kampala City Council Authority and Ministry of Health.  They had several weekly sessions for four consecutive weeks.  Some of the areas covered under the discussion included; the current statistics on COVID-19 and its trend across the country, the cause of COVID-19, how COVID-19 is spread, signs and symptoms, preventive measures, why the need of screening everyone, and how to handle a COVID-19 suspect.

ROM staff were taught about contact tracing and surveillance for COVID-19. The importance of these two was emphasized and a ROM Surveillance committee was set up to spearhead and monitor daily facility activities encompassing daily screening of each and everyone who enters the facilities including the staff.

From this training, my take-home was that you do not have to trust anyone because COVID-19 has signs and symptoms similar to those of the commonest illnesses we have in the country. As staff we should be very vigilant with a very high index of suspicion in order to identify cases as early as possible to avoid spreading the disease further.