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Pharmacy solutions, Strategic Information, Healthcare workers and Disaster Management

Right to Care is part of a broader team of stakeholders on the forefront of the COVID-19 rapid response in South Africa, and other African countries. We provide Departments of Health with technical advice and support across the platform of the COVID-19 response, taking into consideration best practices world-wide.  Our specialist services include Health Care Worker Training, Disaster Medicine Solutions, Pharmaceutical Solutions and Strategic Information including enhanced surveillance, modelling and GIS spatial analytics.  

Coordination, Planning and Operational Support

Provide emergency logistical and resource planning to support incident management and operations to effectively manage suspected and infected individuals.

Strategic Information:

GIS mapping and spatial analytics, which will deliver the following:

  • The rapid development of a social vulnerability index (SVI) for each province to identify areas that require close monitoring and rapid response should an active case be found.
  • Predictive spatial modelling to anticipate potential outbreak areas and impact.
  • Daily mapping of active cases disaggregated to suburb level for cluster identification and visualisation.
  • Linking population and SVI data to the resource map of existing ward and ICU beds in public and private hospitals to predict infrastructure shortfalls.
  • Determination of the optimal location for walk-in centres, drive-through testing sites and field hospitals based on the predicted need.

Data management and integration:

RTC has developed a number of tools with key stakeholders that enable near real time data acquisition and analyses. These include:

  • The Knowledge Centre platform, which offers an e-warehousing data repository that integrates facility, laboratory and patient data. It can be used by health EOCs in daily war-room reviews and provides automated monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and strategic information(SI) reports.
  • E-labs, developed by NHLS and RTC, which is a mobile platform that integrates clinical and laboratory data. It is capable of tracking samples from testing sites to delivering results via mobile phone.
  • Modelling to enable data-driven decision making is enabled by a Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) created platform, supported by our GIS unit, utilising near real time field data. It offers: daily mapping of existing cases and predictive spatial modelling to determine the potential spread, and active case projections per district to determine hospital bed and ICU requirements including the need for the deployment of field hospitals.

Disaster Medicine Consultancy

Provide intensive, specialist technical assistance to provinces, districts and facilities within a declared state of disaster through the application of established principles of disaster medicine using international lessons learned.

Areas of support include:

  • Medical Command: Support the establishment of a health EOC at provincial and district level.
  • Disaster medicine specialist: TA to the provincial health EOC will be provided through a key health advisor with expertise in disaster medicine.
  • Safety: continuously supporting provincial health EOC to ensure guidance for safety is followed and all role-players are protected.
  • Communication: Supporting communication within and between the medical command structures, other stakeholders and the public.
  • Assessment: Continuous comprehensive assessment of the situation.
  • Triage: Guide coordinated patient flow to optimise utilisation of facilities and resources during the outbreak.
  • Treatment: Analyse capabilities, calculate surge capacity, coordinate structured decanting of facilities and establish additional facilities through a coordinated response, including planning of temporary facilities.
  • Transport: Synchronise the movement of patients, ambulances and tracing cars for both patients and suspects with triage, treatment capabilities, surge capacity and synchronised decanting.

Field Hospitals and Temporary Facilities

As and when required, RTC can provide TA for increasing capacity for testing, isolation and treatment facilities.  TA for field hospitals incudes design, set up, maintenance as well as guidance on budgets.  We use data modelling and GIS mapping to determine where field hospitals should be set up.

Pharmacy Solutions

Provide pharmaceutical solutions to decongest facilities and support social distancing.

  • Multi-month dispensing for all chronic patients
  • Right ePharmacy, a current CCMDD service provider in partnership with the South African DOH, is a proven last-mile dispensing solution capable of supporting registered state patients on chronic medication with multi-month drug supplies through an easy-to use, safe and managed dispensing service. Drugs are stored in specially designed Collect & Go smart lockers placed at safe and accessible community access points. A number of smart lockers are available to be deployed immediately.

Enhanced Surveillance and Rapid Response Teams

Provide TA and capacity the two phases of the pandemic.

  • Containment phase: Early case identification through screening and testing, rapid detection of imported cases, comprehensive and rapid contact tracing.
  • Mitigation phase: Monitoring the geographic spread of the virus, transmission intensity, disease trends and the impacts on healthcare services.

Laboratory and Testing Services

Provide TA to prepare laboratory capacity to manage large scale testing for COVID-19. Existing tools and capabilities to deliver this include:

  • eLABS, a mobile platform that tracks the laboratory value chain processes, records and quantifies data, provides health workers with results, and allows for an audit trail and near real-time data analysis and reporting.
  • GIS mapping of existing testing laboratory locations and optimal location of mobile laboratory support.

Health Care Worker Training and Capacity Building

  •  Provide COVID-19 training for doctors, nurses, community health care workers and other healthcare workers such as dentists, so that they are equipped to manage the pandemic.  We are currently providing comprehensive training packages free of charge, on this website.
  • Set up triage and screening areas at all healthcare facilities.
  • Establish dedicated, well- equipped teams and ambulances to transport suspected and confirmed cases, as well as referral mechanisms for severe cases with co-morbidity.

Risk Communication

Provide regular, appropriate communication with the public to enable all citizens to understand COVID-19 and what the government is doing to manage the crises, how to access services, and what individuals must do to contribute to epidemic control and manage the disease.

Right to Care’s successes and capabilities

  • Employs 3,300+ staff across seven countries and supports 800,000+ patients living with HIV with antiretroviral treatment (ART).
  • Operates with 10+ US government contracts and agreements.
  • Provided direct service delivery to Sierra Leone in 2015 in the management of the Ebola epidemic.
  • Supported Zambia in the control of the Cholera outbreak in 2017.
  • Extensive experience in innovative use of digital technology for programme management and planning.
  • Pioneered client-centred care and differentiated service delivery models.
  • We put patients first.