In Sierra Leone, the Holy Spirit Hospital has implemented a triage system to identify infectious diseases and separate those who come to the hospital for suspected Coronavirus from other patients.
Once the facility was set up, the triage as an access point for patients going to Holy Spirit Hospital was able to immediately begin to welcome patients. This area is the first step in assessing whether the patient may be suffering from Covid and, if so, isolating them and taking them to the government hospital in Makeni , the only center in the region where tests are performed and coronavirus patients are taken care of. Seku, the local contact for the project, wrote to us: “the triage is very important because by separating contagious people from others before entering the hospital, it allows us to control and prevent the spread of Covid and infectious diseases in general. At the moment, we have four members of staff managing the triage under the supervision of a doctor.” The triage began its activity on January 21, 2021 and in the first ten days it allowed us to visit 296 patients of which 14 were referred to Makeni Government Hospital as suspected cases of Covid 19. Of these, 2 cases actually tested positive for Coronavirus.
At the end of January, the pandemic situation recorded an average of 65 new infections per day, with 3,660 total cases, 2,340 recoveries and 79 deaths.
