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The Ministry of Health was yesterday exuding confidence the recently launched home-based care protocol was already paying dividends saying that it could be the magic bullet in the fight against coronavirus.

Although some players in the health sector and the ordinary people saw the launch of the programme on June 10 as a big gamble especially considering how lethal the virus is, it has become a source of hope and inspiration.

This week alone, some 2,738 patients who were under the home-based care programme have been discharged after recovering from the disease and yesterday, the Ministry of Health was bullish saying they have been vindicated.

In fact, this formed the backbone of the daily Covid briefing yesterday, an indication of the seriousness Health CS Mutahi Kagwe and his team was placing on the programme after a surge in the number of recoveries in the last few weeks.

In a statement read on his behalf by CAS Rashid Aman, Kagwe described it as a success story. Kenya is the only country in the region to adopt home-based care which stems from the fact that 90 per cent of its patients are asymptomatic.

According to Ministry of Health, asymptomatic patients do not develop symptoms associated with the respiratory illness which originated in Wuhan, China last December before spreading across the globe.

Succumbed to disease

According to official information, more than 621,310 people had succumbed to the disease by yesterday afternoon while over 15 million infections had been reported in 213 countries with the US being the epicenter.

 However, over nine million have recovered from the disease globally. Locally, the national case load now stands at 14, 805 after 637 more people turned out positive from 4,275 samples tested in the last 24 hours.

At the same time, the death toll has risen to 260 after 10 more patients succumbed to the disease, Aman said in his briefing yesterday.

Initially, when we announced the move to have the home based care programme as part of our strategy to combat the Covid, there were a few people who were skeptical but I am sure by now we have been vindicated, he said.

Describing the increasing number of recoveries which now stands at 6, 757 as a major success, Aman said this has given the fight against the disease a new impetus. He said that the home-based care protocol was the way to go.

As our top medical personnel have continued to explain about the Home-Based Programme, we shall continue to emphasise tour people the need to embrace this noble idea, he said.

Cheaper, better option

“This is because, it is a far much cheaper and better option towards the recovery of a patient, for all asymptomatic cases, as opposed to being admitted in hospital facility,” he explained.

“This means that, our facilities will have to care for the 10 per cent capacity of Covid positive patients with moderate, severe and critical diseases,” he said.

According to him, patients were also recovering faster because of the conducive home environment.

When managed from home, the asymptomatic cases would have the better home environment, which psychologically enables them to recover faster and resume their normal lives, he said. 

“This gives the answer to the high number of recoveries from the Covid, since we launched it two months ago,” he added. 

The Ministry of Health unveiled a raft of rules and regulations governing home-based care which requires that a patient must be asymptomatic and should not have any underlying medical conditions.

A patient must also have a care giver and a well-ventilated isolation room at home.

There should be no elderly or vulnerable person at the home. The ministry also hired more than 60,000 community health care volunteers to help in monitoring.