Safety measures in selected radiotherapy centres within Africa in the face of Covid-19
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Safety measures in selected radiotherapy centres within Africa in the face of Covid-19 Francis Hasford 1
&
Taofeeq Abdallah Ige 2 & Christoph Trauernicht 3
Received: 26 June 2020 / Accepted: 31 July 2020 # IUPESM and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Radiotherapy is life-saving treatment which ought to be guaranteed for all cancer patients who are indicated. While this is so, it is incumbent on the management of radiotherapy centres to ensure that patients, patient care-givers and radiotherapy personnel are at all times safe within the radiotherapy facility. Cancer patients are known to have increased risk for respiratory viruses like Covid-19 due to the compromised immune state of such persons. It is thus important to institute adequate safety measures in radiotherapy centres to prevent infection of cancer patients during the global Covid-19 pandemic. A survey conducted in 12 radiotherapy centres in 8 African countries has highlighted key measures needing implementation to ensure safety against Covid19 infections. The safety measures were indexed on a 16-point questionnaire covering 5 main areas of staffing, radiotherapy environment, equipment and treatment protocols, patient condition and scheduling, and education/sensitization. The study shows that use of personal protective equipment, provision of hand washing and sanitizing facilities, social distance observance, restrictions for patient care-givers, provision of isolation unit meant for holding suspected Covid-19 cases, existence of working protocols, and Covid-19 safety education for staff are fully complied with by the surveyed radiotherapy centres. A greater portion of the centres, are however, without radiotherapy facilities solely dedicated for suspicious and confirmed Covid-19 cases. Strict adherence of the safety measures is highly essential to contain the spread and prevent infection of the disease to patients, caregivers and staff of the radiotherapy departments. Keywords Covid-19 . Radiotherapy . Cancer . Personal protective equipment . Africa
1 Introduction The World Health Organization (WHO) describes severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) as a novel, highly infectious strain of corona virus which was first detected in man in the latter part of 2019 [1]. This strain of coronavirus was first discovered in Wuhan, This article is part of the Topical Collection on COVID-19 Health Technology: Design, Regulation, Management, Assessment * Francis Hasford [email protected] 1
Department of Medical Physics, School of Nuclear and Allied Sciences, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana
2
Department of Medical Physics, National Hospital, Abuja, Nigeria
3
Division of Medical Physics, Department of Medical Imaging and Clinical Oncology, Stellenbosch University and Tygerberg Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa
China and causes a highly infectious severe respiratory symptoms called coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). The disease has clinical symptoms of fever, fatigue, dry cough, myalgia
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