Kenya Navigates Covid-19 Pandemic Through Innovation

Covid-19 in Kenya has served as a launchpad for solutions and technological innovations thus filling gaps in response to tackling the pandemic.

Testing kits
Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) has developed automated modern Covid-19 rapid test kits to facilitate and fast track mass testing and to ease the government facility testing burden. The institution hopes to test at least 35,000 samples for the coronavirus in 24 hours. The results will be out in 15 minutes.KEMRI will use the Cobas 6800 or the 8800 HIV viral load machines and the GeneXpert used to test for tuberculosis.

PPEs and Face Masks

Instead of waiting for Chinese imports and foreign aid, the Kenyan Health Cabinet Secretary declared plans by the government to identify mass producers of essential preventive garments. One such producer is Kitui County Textile Centre (KICOTEC) based in Kitui County that is producing 30,000 masks per day with efforts being made to scale up production to 100,000 and more pieces per day. The other is Eldoret-based Rivatex producing 8,400 face masks per day. The Shona EPZ Ltd has also been roped in and switched from making export products to manufacturing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE ) including masks for frontline health workers.

Ventilators
There's a crippling shortage of ventilators around the world due to the huge number of COVID-19 infections recorded so far. This has led the Health Cabinet Secretary of Kenya Mutahi Kagwe to urge suppliers not to hoard the machines. The situation has not been helped by the closing of borders across the world and the inability to import the important equipments urgently needed to save lives. A group of students from different Kenyan universities came up with complete ventilator prototypes which are awaiting certification and approval from the government. 

They did this in order to fill the gap left from the shortage of the machines in the country. "For the past seven days, we have been working here with a team of 16 students from the school of Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Pharmacy, Medicine, and Nursing to make these ventilators," Brian Karanja, one of the students from Kenyatta University studying pharmacy explained. “We blended oxygen andMedics in advanced countries are also faced with ventilator shortage and have been forced to choose who gets to use one and who doesn't.

 

Msafari: Contact Tracing App for Commuters

The Msafari application by Tirus Ooyi and Martin Oloo of Fab Lab Winam, is a tool that will help in contact-tracing as it moves to tame the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. It will track PSV commuters and help with contract tracing in the event that a case is confirmed to have used public transport therefore placing other commuters at risk. Public transporters and their passengers will be required to provide critical data that will help trace back the movements of infected or suspected cases.

 Matatus, taxis and motorbike operators will be required to collect contact details of every passenger which will automatically register on the mSafari platform. All PSVs, including their owners and respective Sacco will be required to enroll on the platform using their vehicle registration numbers. The tool will also check compliance of PSVs on the maximum number of passengers allowed, in line with the social-distancing measures that have been touted by experts as critical in containing the virus. In the event the limit is exceeded, the application will signal an established database for action against the operators by the relevant authority.

 

Fuata: Contact Tracing App

Another app called Fuata (Swahili word meaning follow) by Peter Munyi aims to alert one if they come into contact with anyone infected with the highly-contagious virus. The app subscribers will get a unique ID given to them which will connect remotely with another subscribers phone when they meet. The subscribers IDs will be recorded automatically and data kept for a period of 21 to 30 days. 

This data will be used to identify anyone the subscriber met in those days and was later diagnosed with the virus. And like all new technologies, the issues of privacy especially in tracking tech has been contentious. Peter says, “We are aware of how important privacy is and that’s why we won’t be using GPS but proximity sensing technology like what is used in Xender (a media sharing app.) This doesn’t disclose any information about someone.”