Best practices in COVID-19 infection control protocols and hospital management were among the major topics discussed during a week-long visit of an Israeli health delegation to the Philippines.
The team of experts also visited some hospitals and medical facilities in Metro Manila to observe their operations and provide recommendations on how they can further improve their systems and procedures.
During an exit conference between the Israeli medical experts and their Philippine counterparts on Friday, July 30, Dr. Guy Choshen, infectious diseases and COVID-19 specialist, noted some of the key factors that need to be considered in treating COVID-19 patients.
According to Choshe, these factors include the implementation of standard health care in DOH medical centers; the need to implement or articulate a patient’s discharge guidelines; allowing patients to be visited by their family visits in hospitals; and the implementation of critical patients’ restrictions, as well as infection control measures.
He also commended the country’s health care workers for the professionalism they have shown in the face of the challenges caused by the pandemic.
“I was highly impressed by their professionalism and I am sure that there are better ways to improve the way you give healthcare to the cities,” Choshen said.
Chaim Markos Rafalowski, disaster management coordinator at Magen David Adom, shared that in Israel, they have a “National daily health team evaluation” where they gather more than one hundred health professionals from different branches to discuss the current situation of their health care system.
“The objective of this is to understand the current situation and to identify the crisis and try to foresee where we are heading,” Rafalowski explained.
“And the most important aspect is to set up priorities for immediate action for the short and long term healthcare system with regards to COVID-19,” he added.
For his part, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said: “One of the impacts that we hope to be able to achieve in our unified strategy management against this pandemic is to bring down mortality rate perhaps less than 1 percent, if not less than .5 percent, as much as we can.”