Nexleaf Analytics, the Center for Public Health and Development, and PagerDuty are partnering to bring better data on essential power for health clinics located in COVID-19 hotspots across Kenya.
LOS ANGELES and NAIROBI, 9/30/2020 – Today, Nexleaf is launching a project in Nairobi, Kenya to monitor the power availability in health facilities within COVID hotspots. Working with the Center for Public Health and Development (CPHD) based in Kenya and with funding and software support from PagerDuty, the team will collaborate to understand where and why power outages occur and how to improve the power infrastructure across facilities.
Medical equipment relies on power to function properly. Power surges, lags, and outages not only damage expensive medical equipment, but can also affect quality of care. As healthcare professionals continue to wage the fight against the ongoing pandemic and rely on life-saving equipment to diagnose, treat and rehabilitate patients, the importance of reliable power is evident now more than ever.
Nexleaf, a non-profit advancing health in low- and middle-income countries through innovation, and CPHD, a non-profit bringing innovative solutions to public health challenges in the Eastern African region, will apply power monitoring tools to health facilities in Nairobi dealing with the highest cases of COVID-19. With foundational support from PagerDuty, the team will examine the parameters to design effective real time alerts for responding to emergency power outages, to ensure that alerts are triggered based on the needs of health workers and reflect the on the ground context. These alerts will help Nexleaf and the CPHD team explore immediate mitigation measures and effective actions healthcare workers could make in response to power outages.
“When a patient is in critical condition, unreliable power can be the difference between life and death,” says Marym Mohammady, Program Manager at Nexleaf. “At times like these, fast action is critical and so is reliable information. We’re excited to launch this project with CPHD and PagerDuty to begin generating much needed information on power and make it so power is not a limiting factor for healthcare delivery in low-to-middle income countries.”