KIU, Western Campus – The KIU Western Campus COVID-19 task force, which was inaugurated on Tuesday June 2, has successfully completed its training, aimed at increasing the campus’ vigilance in handling the risk posed by the potential resumption of business by students and staff later this month.

Following President Yoweri Museveni’s decision to extend the return date of finalist students to school to an extra 30 days on May 31, the university administration decided to institute its own COVID-19 task force to prepare for this development.

The task force is constituted by university and KIU Teaching hospital administrators, and was trained by the Assistant District Health Officer (ADHO) for Bushenyi district, Dr Eliab Tayebwa (standing, holding microphone in picture).

Dr Tayebwa taught the task force on how to treat signals and alerts from the community about COVID-19 suspected cases and how to trace, monitor and manage any suspected patients until they are either treated or found to be free of the disease.

“In the health sector, a rumour is treated as gospel truth until confirmed otherwise,” Dr Tayebwa told the task force.

“The task force should therefore be alert to signal and alert, but also maintain confidentiality of the person who signified it about the suspect,” he added.

The Deputy Vice-Chancellor for KIU Western campus Prof Patrick Kyamanywa thanked Dr Tayebwa for training the task force and sharing learning material with them.

“Public transport has been opened and the risk is now high because the virus could spread quickly. So as the university task force, we should start the vigilance now,” Prof Kyamanywa said.

KIU Teaching Hospital is the main Health centre to have been chosen by the Bushenyi district COVID-19 task force to handle any COVID-19 case that may arise in the area. 

The hospital and district task forces have been working together to prevent the outbreak of the disease in the district since the first case was declared in the country by the Ministry of Health on March 21.