Location: Kenya (Kiambu County, Juja and other communities)

Ryculture Health and Social Innovation is a social enterprise committed to championing for and inculcating a culture of active citizenship and social responsibility among Kenyan youth with regard to health and their general well-being. In line with our work, when the Coronavirus disease outbreak was reported we saw the imminent threat it posed on health access and human lives. We therefore resorted to align our work to help respond to the situation. On this account, our work has been in the form of;

1. Sharing of information from different sources on how to prevent transmission e.g. hand washing, self isolation, social distancing, wearing masks and staying at home. These have been through our participation in the National Community Engagement Mechanism, Youth Team.

2. We aligned our advocacy work to highlighting some of the challenges in the healthcare system especially along the tracks that we have been working on. With COVID-19, we are witnessing heightened anxiety levels which are contributing to mental illnesses. In line with this, we did an article to share coping mechanisms with young people in our network (https://inforyculture.wixsite.com/ryculture/post/coping-with-the-psychological-effects-of-covid19-it-s-time-to-build-our-resilience-with-ingenuity).

Masks have been recommended for use to reduce risk of infection. Unfortunately, misddirection has spread about how to put on masks and has given individuals a false sense of protection. On this account, we did an article to create awareness on how to wear a mask; (https://inforyculture.wixsite.com/ryculture/post/why-when-and-how-to-wear-a-face-mask).

Health systems are under strain as focus is shifted on responses to COVID-19. This puts other patient groups at risk and as part of the healthcare workforce, we try to support in service delivery. In situations where our hands are tied, we write about the shortfalls with hope that someone will respond to the advantage of the patients. This has been the case for HIV/AIDS patients at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) who are not getting their routine prophylactic dose of Co-trimoxazole (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/global-health-security-amidst-pandemic-case-hivaids-patients-david/).

Cognizant of the fact that life is meant to continue post this pandemic, we had a moment to reflect on the kind of life the youth we are passionate about empowering will get back to. This is in realization that life will not be normal considering some have lost their jobs or will lose their jobs in the coming days as lock-down takes a hit on employers. It also was evident that most of these young people especially university students were home with almost nothing to keep them busy and in the spirit of our mentorship, we wrote an article in the form of a guide to help them cope with the current situation and be better equipped once it all settles down (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/riding-wave-covid-19-personal-growth-development-dr-odhiambo-david/).

Through such activities we hope we make a difference in someone's life at these trying times.

Support Needed

Funds needed: Our budget for the overall work as at this time was 3,000 USD. As at the moment, we have a shortage of 1,500USD. This was to help in recruiting five (5) people to support in coordination of our responses at a rate of 10USD per day for 30 days as below:

1. One (1) person to help liaise with the National Call Center to establish follow up mechanisms in case there is a suspected case. This was to help streamline response mechanism to ensure we don't have infected people rushing to hospitals using public means which will further compromise the efforts by spreading the infection.

2. One (1) person to help with development of contextualized graphic content for the campaigns in line with local settings. Issues of concern are local use of soap which is easily accessible but because of marketing efforts and public health communication, sanitizers are taking root with hiked prices. This is affecting the public who struggle to afford them and there is also a risk that these sanitizers are sub-standard. Same applies to face masks for which quality of most of the cloth masks are not up to standard. These are giving the public a false sense of protection while in reality they are exposed. Our communication is meant to target these shortfalls.

3. Three (3) people to help with desktop literature review both on scientific components of the virus. This will cover the virus form and any related virus strains which have ever been reported both in animals and humans, collate the evidence with associated complications that were observed, do a comparative analysis with available evidence for COVID-19 to help layout more comparative data for further research. This will help in ensuring current research is targeted, public health communication is reliable e.g. around safety in pregnancy which the virus may be having effects on the newborn to be witnessed later after delivery. If this is determined and communicated in the right way, pregnant women will take extra caution thus avert probable devastation from having a child with disabilities from this disease.

Other support: Volunteers, Space for online meetings 

See more:  

Website: https://inforyculture.wixsite.com/ryculture 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ryculture-health-and-social-innovation/?viewAsMember=true 

Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/RycultureHealth/?ref=bookmarks 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RycultureHealth 

For more information or to get in touch, contact covid19@unmgcy.org