In this era of the emergence of new technologies, the health sector is more and more conducive to the use of various technological tools to better understand and serve those who are deprived of health services either due to their geographical location or to the absence of competent medical staff who can better treat their diseases.
In this globalized world, considering that there is a certain need of fast-tracking the process of sharing not only information but also the knowledge, digital tools happen to be the best solution to the problems that are being faced in the remoted areas.
Health authorities worldwide have been using different technological tools to thwart a real challenge for the future generations. Henceforth, technologies are being used with success in the management of outbreaks (i.e. Ebola outbreak in West Africa) to reach out to the remoted communities. And in Rwanda, the Rwanda Biomedical Centre is focusing on introducing these new technologies in the management of outbreaks, starting by the current situation of the Covid-19 pandemic.
For the Rwanda Biomedical Centre, if successful, the introduction of this new tool in the management of outbreaks will bring solutions to problems that the country is currently facing in the tracing of potential Covid-19 positive cases. Hence this will considerably reduce the resources that RBC has been putting in place to trace the cases’ contacts.
In this line RBC tasked Rinda ubuzima to conduct the e-ASCov Project. This project intended to assess the involvement of community health workers (CHWs), and the use of digital tools in the management of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Rwanda. Specifically, the project intended to train and equip Community Health Workers (CHWs) with innovative digital technology to allow them providing home and center-based care for chronic care management, supporting outbreak like COVID-19 preparedness and response, and promoting resiliency strategies. In total through this project 400 community health workers were trained, they were selected from 4 districts; Gasabo, Nyarugenge, Kirehe and Rusizi at the time the selection based on the high number of COVID-19 cases in those districts.
The main objective of the training sessions was to assess, improve, and provide knowledge to Community Health Workers on COVID-19. Specifically, training sessions were to equip Community health workers with accurate information on the Covid-19 Pandemic, provide them with extensive knowledge on the use of digital tools to detect COVID-19 cases, and generally provide them with knowledge on home-based care for COVID-19 cases.
Training included sessions on; the transmission of Covid-19, its symptoms, how to look after the mental health of patients as well as their direct entourage (families, friends, neighbours, etc.), the use of PPEs, how to properly use communication as a tool of spreading awareness and how to use the e-ASCov application. This project was conducted from September 2020 to January 2021, the project was very successful, as in the period mentioned above , community health workers were able to collect information in the community, 6000 people in the community were reached out to using digital tools where some of them had critical conditions.