Adopting World Health Organization Multimodal Infection Prevention and Control Strategies to Respond to COVID-19, Kenya

Abstract

The World Health Organization advocates a multimodal approach to improving infection prevention and control (IPC) measures, which Kenya adopted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Kenya Ministry of Health formed a national IPC committee for policy and technical leadership, coordination, communication, and training. During March-November 2020, a total of 69,892 of 121,500 (57.5%) healthcare workers were trained on IPC. Facility readiness assessments were conducted in 777 health facilities using a standard tool assessing 16 domains. A mean score was calculated for each domain across all facilities. Only 3 domains met the minimum threshold of 80%. The Ministry of Health maintained a national list of all laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections. By December 2020, a total of 3,039 healthcare workers were confirmed to be SARS-CoV-2-positive, an infection rate (56/100,000 workers) 12 times higher than in the general population. Facility assessments and healthcare workers' infection data provided information to guide IPC improvements.

Keywords: COVID-19; Kenya; SARS-CoV-2; World Health Organization; coronavirus disease; infection control; pandemic; respiratory infections; severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; viruses; zoonoses.

Figure 1

Assessment scores across various domains for IPC readiness assessment among 777 health facilities, Kenya, 2020. Red line indicates optimal score of 80%. IPC, infection prevention and control.

Figure 2

Epidemic curve for COVID-19 in general population and healthcare workers, Kenya, 2020.