First One-Stop Covid-19 triage, sample collection booth launched
This service will be available for six days a week, from morning to evening, except Friday, and the service is totally free of cost.
Digital Healthcare Solutions (DH), the Institute for Developing Science and Health Initiatives (ideSHi) and Mugda Medical College & Hospital (MuMCH) have collaborated to launch the first of the new digital booths to help increase the capacity in Bangladesh for Covid-19 screening and testing.
Saber Hossain Chowdhury, member of Parliament from Dhaka-9 constituency and chairman of Mugda General Hospital Management Committee, inaugurated the booth through an online video conference on June 4, says a press release.
After a tele-consultation with a doctor, patients with strong symptoms of Covid-19 will proceed to the nearby DH Sample collection booth at Mugda Medical College & Hospital, and provide patients' sample.
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This service will be available for six days a week, from morning to evening, except Friday, and the service is totally free of cost.
Patients will get the test result and additional advice, within 48 hours. In order to ensure quality and safety, this booth will collect 150 samples daily, on a first come first serve basis.
At all times, norms of physical distancing will be followed.
Mugda Medical College & Hospital is providing operational support, and ideSHi will provide full laboratory testing of the Covid-19 samples. Digital Healthcare Solutions (DH) have followed design guidelines developed by the Institute of Architects Bangladesh (IAB), who have adapted successful designs from Korea and other countries for the Bangladesh context.
The IAB designs aims to provide highest safety standards for patients, and protect sample collectors from risk of infection, through a completely airtight negative pressure system.
As an innovative one-stop model for screening and sample collection for the reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) confirmatory Covid-19 test, the model will also provide lessons which could potentially help the programme expand the initiative in other parts of the country, including more rural areas where there is shortage of doctors and medical facilities.
This initiative has taken under a multi-partner consortium, led by Concern Worldwide, which is implementing the Essential Healthcare for the Disadvantaged (EHD) in Bangladesh Programme, funded with UK aid from the UK government.
