FEBRUARY 2022
What's in this issue?
Event Spotlight
On February 17, 2022, more than 500 health care providers from the public and private sectors across the 17 regions of the country participated in the Community of Practice (CoP) webinar on COVID-19 triage.
Hosted by the USAID’s Meeting Targets and Maintaining Epidemic Control (EpiC) Project in the Philippines managed by FHI 360, the webinar discussed the basic principles of triage and how to redesign patient flows in the context of COVID-19 case management.
Dr. Kate Douglass, a Senior Technical Clinical Advisor of the EpiC COVID-19 Global Team, shared her emergency medicine and public health expertise and experience in implementing efficient triage systems, especially in resource-limited settings.
Selected specialty doctors in emergency medicine, infectious disease, and pulmonology from varying levels of hospitals joined the town-hall discussion. They shared their challenges, lessons learned, and best practices in managing patients with COVID-19 from their entry to the facility and employing good infection prevention and control practices while considering strategic use of their existing capacities and resources.
Through knowledge-sharing, USAID’s EpiC continues to build the capacities of health care workers in ensuring that the patients who need more medical attention and COVID-19 care will be prioritized early, right at the start of triage.
If you missed the live webinar, you could still watch the recording on-demand.
COVID-19 Triage Resources
Please refer to the following resources with caution. These are reference and guidance documents only. Kindly review your institutional policies and protocols.
- Algorithm for COVID-19 Referral and Triage (Modified), Department of Health
- Algorithm for COVID-19 Triage and Referral: Patient Triage and Referral for Resource-Limited Settings during Community Transmission, World Health Organization
- Establishing COVID-19 Triage Stations at Healthcare Facilities: Key Instructions and Tips, World Health Organization
- Standard Operating Procedure for Triage of Suspected COVID-19 Patients in Non-US Healthcare Settings, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Updates from the Field
Installation and delivery of mechanical ventilators and related consumables and supplies
Maguindanao Provincial Hospital (MPH), a Level 2 hospital in Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) with a 299-bed capacity, received 2 mechanical ventilators donated by the U.S. Government.
USAID's EpiC, in collaboration with the BARMM Ministry of Health, Integrated Provincial Health Office of Maguindanao, and RG Meditron, installed these ventilators at MPH and trained the hospital staff on how to use the machine.
MPH also received an initial 20 adult patient breathing circuits and 100 heat and moisture exchange (HME) filters from USAID’s EpiC, ready for use for patients who require mechanical ventilation. The hospital management and staff were grateful for these life-saving ventilators and corresponding supplies.
With USAID support, these state-of-the-art ventilators, along with the tailored technical assistance package, will strengthen the hospital’s capacity to deliver quality care, manage critically ill persons with COVID-19, and help save more lives.
Our Mental Health Matters
Remember that now more than ever, we need to promote and protect our own mental health, especially for you as a health worker who has been in the frontline since Day 1 of the pandemic.
If you need someone to talk to, you can reach out to the following helplines below.
Learning Opportunity
eLearning Course Related to Screening and Triage
This online course via the OpenWHO intended for health care workers focuses on the initial approach to the acutely ill patient, including topics on screening and triage and using the integrated interagency triage tool.
ICYMI
We'd love to hear from you!
Credits:
WHO/WPRO. Philippines DOH. FHI 360 Philippines. Yikun Wang. Lauren Mancke. Avel Chuklanov. Created with an image by MintBlack4u - "coronavirus disease covid-2019 coronavirus corona".