AN ASSESSMENT OF FACTORS INFLUENCING THE MANAGEMENT OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC AMONG COUNTY GOVERNMENTS IN KENYA
Abstract
The global pandemic of Covid-19 created dramatic challenges for governments worldwide. It led to skyrocketing numbers of deaths and outbreaks, challenged the public and private health systems of many countries and brought many national economies to a halt. Kenya was not an exception and like other countries used a number of strategies to combat the epidemic but equally suffered the same fate. There is little empirical evidence to determine whether the strategies, especially by the county governments were effective in handling the Covid-19 pandemic. Thereby lies the knowledge gap that this study seeks to answer. It is against this background that this study sought to assess the extent to which medical equipment and supplies, personnel and funding influenced the management of the Covid-19 pandemic by county governments in Kenya. The general objective guiding the study was, to assess the factors influencing the management of the Covid-19 pandemic among county governments in Kenya. The specific objectives of the study were: To determine the extent to which medical equipment and supplies influenced the management of the Covid-19 pandemic in the county governments, to determine the extent to which the use of personnel resources influenced the management of the Covid-19 pandemic in the county governments and to determine the extent to which funding influenced the management of Covid-19 pandemic in the county governments. Fink's crisis management model guided the study, which reviewed the empirical literature on medical equipment and supplies, personnel resources and funding in the management of the Covid-19 pandemic. This study adopted a descriptive survey research design with a target population of 70,500 employees from the health sector. The research used simple random sampling as a sampling technique and a sample size of 100 respondents was selected using the Yamane formula. Data was collected using questionnaires. The data were subjected to descriptive statistics and analyzed using SPSS. Based on the findings, 79.6% of the respondents agreed that medical equipment and supplies greatly influenced the management of the Covid-19 pandemic in the county governments, 85% of the respondents indicated that personnel resources played a critical role in the management of Covid-19 pandemic among the counties and 74.2% of the respondents agreed that funding greatly influenced management of Covid-19 pandemic in county governments. Based on the findings, the study recommended that a staff audit and workload analysis should be undertaken and a recruitment process initiated to improve staffing levels; an audit of bed capacity of all medical facilities be initiated and a procurement plan for the acquisition of additional beds based on needs undertaken; an audit and analysis of staff training be undertaken to identify training gaps and necessary action initiated; negotiate with SRC on additional medical staff allowances and lastly fast-track legislation on the expenditure of emergency funds.
JEL: H10; H51; H76; I10; I18
Article visualizations:
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Abdul-Aziz, S., John, E., Edward, K. et al. (2020). The role of testing in the fight against COVID-19: Current happenings in Africa and the way forward. International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 98, 237-240.
Ali, Y., M. S. Narjes, S., Esmat, R., et al. (2022). Health human resources challenges during COVID-19 pandemic; evidence of a qualitative study in a developing country. Plos one, 1-20.
Ball, I. (2021). Burning the buffer: New Zealand’s budgetary response to COVID-19. Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management, 33(1)95 - 105.
Barasa, E., Ouma, P. and Okiro, E. (2020). Assessing the hospital surge capacity of the Kenyan health system in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. PLOS ONE, 1-13.
Caplan, G. (1964). Principles of Preventive Psychiatry. New York: Basic books.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021). Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). https://www.cdc.gov/ Accessed May 2, 2022.
Dyer, P. (2021). Policy and Institutional Responses to Covid-19: South Korea. Washington, DC: Brookings Publications.
Fink. S. (1986). Crisis Management: Planning for the Inevitable. IUniverse Inc. NE: Lincoln.
Giuseppe, G. and Ho, A. (2020). Budgetary responses to a global pandemic: international experiences and lessons for a sustainable future. Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management, 32(5), 737-744. DOI: 10.1108/JPBAFM-12-2020-189
Gizachew, T., Yohannes, K., Berihun, A. et al. (2021). The COVID-19 pandemic and healthcare systems in Africa: a scoping review of preparedness, impact and response. BJM Global Health, 1-14. Doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-007179.
Hui, D. S., Azhar, E. I., Tariq, A. M. et al. (2020). The continuing 2019-nCoV epidemic threat of novel coronaviruses to global health-the latest 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China. International Journal of Infectious Diseases, (91), 264-266. doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2020.01.009
James, R. (2008). Crisis intervention strategies. Belmont: Brooks/Cole.
Karen, B., and Lasater, L. (2021). Chronic hospital nurse understaffing meets COVID -19; an observational study. BMJ Qual Saf, 639-647.
Kinder, M. (2020, May 28). Essential but undervalued: Millions of health care workers aren’t getting the pay or respect they deserve in the COVID-19 pandemic. Brookings Institution. Retrieved https://www.brookings.edu/research).
McGarry, B, Barnett, M., Grabowski, D. & Gandhi, A. (2021). Nursing home staff vaccination and COVID-19 outcomes. The New England Journal of Medicine, 386(4), 397-398. doi: 10.1056/NEJMc2115674
Nabe-Nielsen, K., Charlotte, J., Maria, J., et al. (2021). COVID-19 risk management at the workplace, fear of infection and fear of transmission of infection among frontline employees. Occup Environ Med, 78, 248 -254. Doi: 10.1136/oemed-2020-106831
Owino, B. (2022). Kenya’s Covid-19 budget: Funding for health and welfare. Bristol: Development Initiatives.
Pathak, K. D. (2020). COVID-19 economic shocks and fiscal policy options for Ghana. Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management, 903-917.
Perlman, S. (2020). Another Decade, Another Coronavirus. N Engl J Med., 20; 382(8), 760-762. Doi: 10.1056/NEJMe2001126. Retrieved from Smartsheet.com. https://www.smartsheet.com/
Seyed, M., Affan, S., Meagan, C. et al. (2022). Projecting hospital utilization during the COVID-19 outbreaks in the United States. PNAS, 117(16), 9122–9126. Doi/10.1073/pnas.2004064117.
Shaharior, R., Tasnuva, Y., Taimia, B. et al. (2021). Challenges faced by healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative inquiry from Bangladesh. Frontiers in Public Health, 9, 1 - 8. doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.647315
Sonu, B., Akansha, S., Maciej, B. et al. (2020). Cytokine Storm in COVID-19—Cytokine Storm in Covid-19: Immunopathological Mechanisms, Clinical Considerations, and Therapeutic Approaches: The REPROGRAM Consortium Position Paper. Frontiers in immunology, 11, 1-16. Doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2020.01648
Sushama, S., Subhash, B., Ashok, J. et al. (2020). Evaluation of effectiveness of COVID-19 training of tertiary health care workers. International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health, 7(7), 2635 -2639. eISSN 2394-6040.
Tang, X. et al. (2020). On the origin and continuing evolution of SARS-CoV-2. National Science Review, (7), 1012–1023.
Villiers, C. (2020). The South African government’s response to COVID-19. Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management, 32(5), 797 - 811. DOI 10.1108/JPBAFM-07-2020-0120.
WHO Media Report. (2020). COVID-19 UPDATE: Readiness Situation Update, WHO AFRO Region. 25 February 2020, Epidemiological Week No. 9. https://whotogo-whoafroccmaster/
Worldometer. (2020). COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Yamane, T. (1967). Statistics, An Introductory Analysis, 2nd Ed., New York: Harper and Row.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejmms.v7i3.1276
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2022 Chirchir Matthew Kimeli, Leiro Solomon Letangule, Oduor James Otieno, Cherono Mercy, Moshong Celestine Chesekut, Yegon Jane Cherotich, Ongwae Michael Angelloh, Mwendwa Titus Kitele, Sharon Jerono, Nancy Rotich
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The research works published in this journal are free to be accessed. They can be shared (copied and redistributed in any medium or format) and\or adapted (remixed, transformed, and built upon the material for any purpose, commercially and\or not commercially) under the following terms: attribution (appropriate credit must be given indicating original authors, research work name and publication name mentioning if changes were made) and without adding additional restrictions (without restricting others from doing anything the actual license permits). Authors retain the full copyright of their published research works and cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the license terms are followed.
Copyright © 2017-2023. European Journal of Management and Marketing Studies (ISSN 2501 - 9988) is a registered trademark of Open Access Publishing Group. All rights reserved.
This journal is a serial publication uniquely identified by an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) serial number certificate issued by Romanian National Library. All the research works are uniquely identified by a CrossRef DOI digital object identifier supplied by indexing and repository platforms. All the research works published on this journal are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and standards formulated by Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002), the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003) and Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003) and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Copyrights of the published research works are retained by authors.
