After launch of mobile resuscitation teams in Almaty, number of deaths from COVID-19 decreased

In an interview with PrimeMinister.kz, Head of the Almaty City Public Health Department Kamalzhan Nadyrov said that leading specialists of the Center for Reanimatology and Anesthesiology are actively working to reduce the level of severe patients and mortality. This is a mobile resuscitation group of rapid response, which monitors the condition of patients in all resuscitation departments of the city around the clock and controls the condition of each serious patient.

The mobile team consists of two parts. The main part — resuscitators, who physically make detours, enter the "red" zones, communicate with patients, study their parameters and, through telemedicine, transmit all data to a special headquarters. Experienced specialists are concentrated in this headquarters — resuscitators, anesthesiologists and department staff.

“Thus, we ensure constant monitoring of our difficult patients. This is very important when there is an opportunity and availability of consultations, and we see the first results today. The number of deaths we have is decreasing. The number, we will say, of consultations around patients, if necessary, increases, transfers from the department to the intensive care unit or vice versa — this work has become more intense. Because already after holding these or those consultations, we begin to adjust the treatment. Not always local doctors can adequately and fully assess the patient's severity situation. And this is where our experienced colleagues come to the rescue. This experience has already proved itself quite well,” Nadyrov noted.

The head of the Department of Public Health of Almaty spoke about the work of the recently created Patient Monitoring Center. Its task is round-the-clock monitoring of patients at risk. This will minimize complications on an outpatient basis, especially among the elderly. According to Nadyrov, this format has already proved itself and now the possibility of scaling the work of the Center is being considered.

“The task is for this Patient Monitoring Center to deal not only with patients from the risk group, but in general to scale up its work and our patients have the opportunity to remotely receive certain services through telemedicine without leaving their homes. We are currently working on a large program in this direction. I think it will be presented in the near future. The point is that the doctor, without leaving his home or being somewhere in the headquarters, consulting the patient, could see the entire medical history of the patient. Our task today is to integrate all these systems and provide high quality medical care in a remote format,” Nadyrov said.

In addition, Nadyrov spoke about the situation with drug supply in Almaty and measures to minimize the negative impact of certain failures in drug supply. According to him, today in hospitals, outpatient clinics and polyclinics of the city there is a full range of necessary medicines.

“Yes, I will not deny that there were certain failures. They are associated with a number of reasons. The main supplier of drugs to combat COVID-19 at the inpatient and outpatient levels is the single distributor SK-Pharmacy. Due to various reasons, certain failures were observed at different times. It has something to do with logistics issues: a number of drugs are imported from abroad. Now, in the context of a pandemic, it is very difficult to build logistics routes,” said the head of the Public Health Department of Almaty.

In order to minimize the negative impact of certain disruptions in drug supply, the Akimat of Almaty decided to form a stabilization fund for drugs. About 10 billion tenge has been allocated for this. This money is used to purchase a six-month supply of the most essential drugs. This fund will work both for private pharmacies in order to meet the demand from patients, and at the inpatient level, so that in the event of an interruption on the part of SK-Pharmacy it will always be possible to print the warehouse and deliver drugs to a particular hospital.

“This will ensure continuity. This is already yielding positive results. Now we have all the necessary drugs,” Nadyrov said.

He also noted that today there are a sufficient number of artificial lung ventilation devices in the city. About 100 ventilators have already been purchased. Now the issue of additional purchase of ventilators is being worked out.

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