Deeksha Gupta

 Undoubtedly, the pandemic has brought upon many individuals and institutions great losses in terms of finances, time and resources across various sectors besides the emotional trauma that has cut across all people. When the reality of the pandemic hit nations, there was a shift from unbelief of its existence to panic. At household level, in panic and wanting to buffer from potential long seasons of lockdowns and catastrophic impact of availability of resources, many families went on over-purchase of food stuffs, toiletries and whatever they considered critical. By mid-late 2020, when names of drugs being used for intervention started getting into the public domain, individuals joined the aforementioned trends and there was mass purchase of drugs either to treat symptoms or for preventive measures. Drugs like HCQ, Ivermectin and Azithromycin suddenly became a must have commodity amongst many besides food supplements including Zinc, Vitamins C and D. Inevitably, with increased ...

  A few days back, the Cabinet Secretary in the Ministry of Health in Kenya revealed that the medical bills during the onset of COVID-19 have become astronomical. He said that there is a need to regulate the fees charged because many people are now facing catastrophic health expenditures and are now being pushed towards poverty. There has been an increasing number of people appealing for assistance in settling medical bills, the majority of them being in millions. Many have had to sell, sometimes at almost throw-away prices, their properties – cars, houses, farms, and other valuable assets towards offsetting the bills. As it stands, the majority of Kenyans still do not have medical insurance cover – whether with private insurers or with NHIF. This means that payments for bills are from out of pocket, money which most people do not have especially when faced with a devastating health challenge that requires hospitalization. Unfortunately, daily rates for beds alone are on an ever-...

For decades, patient information has been captured in hospital/clinic cards or books that are stored in the specific health facility. In the recent decade or so, some facilities have set up some computer-based system of capturing some of the patient information but this in many cases has only zeroed in on basic biodata with few capturing medical history.    This information is only important as long as the individual only seeks medical attention in that facility. Unfortunately, most of the facilities that have more than one branch have also not connected their client’s medical records and so it still remains inaccessible even in their own branches. Access to health or medical related data remains problematic in a health care system that still depends largely on claims data, abstraction of data from paper records, and surveys to determine whether patients are receiving identified elements of care. The dependence on abstraction generally limits performance measurement to evaluat...

 A friend of mine once asked me how I could even consider making a business based on people’s ill health, saying that he can invest in anything else but not health and food business. I asked him if could invest in mortuary and hearse services and actually create wealth from such business, he said they fall under healthcare which capitalizes on people’s painful predicaments. Unfortunately, majority of the populace have this mindset. They do not understand how one can create wealth through other people’s suffering. They cannot comprehend how they can be paying for services because of something they did not ask for – disease. The more understanding people do not seem to understand why the services are so expensive and why it takes long for test to be done. As an investor in healthcare, one has to ensure to the best of their ability address such issues recognizing that offering treatment services is beyond a business venture. Investing in quality healthcare is emotions-intensive, fin...

  There is a saying that necessity is the mother of creation and that it is in hard times that the greatest innovations come to the  fore or the ones little appreciated gain recognition and adoption. The outbreak of COVID-19 has brought to the limelight the importance of non-physical contact health services delivery especially in Africa where the notion of E-Health has been shunned by many saying that it practicing medicine without being touched by physician is not medicine. Talking about E-health, Jayesh Saini notes this was an idea whose time for embrace had come and for acceptability COVID-19 happened. He said that E-health has provided very good measures to help mitigate the spread of the corona virus while assisting those affected or infected by the same. He furthermore pointed out that the pandemic has affected not just the healthcare sector but other sectors and has affected service delivery to people with other ailments, bringing great fear that is deterring people fro...