Ngara dispensary in Nairobi Central Business District has been shut down after a clinical officer tested positive for the Covid-19 and all its 10 health workers quarantined.
The clinical officer served a patient suspected to be infected with the virus two weeks ago before he referred the patient to Mbagathi hospital where the person was directed into self-quarantine.
And on Tuesday, the Kenya Union of Clinical Officers confirmed that a clinician from the facility is among those announced to have been confirmed by Health CS Mutahi Kagwe to have contracted Covid-19.
It is reported that the female clinician did not serve any other patient after attending to the one who turned positive.
The officers at the clinic on Monday told this Nairobi News writer that they had scaled down operations for lack of Personal Protective Equipments (PPEs) including masks and gloves.
KUCO Nairobi branch chairman Tom Nyakaba said the clinicians at the facility have no PPEs and pose a risk of being transmission agents to the very patients they are serving, as well as their colleagues and families.
On Monday, few officers were present even as they complained that the national government was yet to deliver the badly needed equipments that will enable them to better handle the situation.
Today the medics said they are only attending to patients who come for regular prescription drugs including TB patients who are known and said they will not handle any emergency cases.
KUCO secretary general George Gibore said their members will not continue working in such risky environments.
“We want to categorically state that our position as health workers is that we are ready and shall sacrifice but we will not commit suicide. We shall not see patients without protection,” he said.
He lamented that clinical officers including Kenya Medical Training College lecturers have been deployed as front-line workers in fight on Covid-19 without any training and protective gear hence putting their lives in danger.
