The madness of the world today is not only the spectre of the Covid 19 virus but the first time in history, there is an avalanche of information, resulting in everyone becoming an expert in Covid recognition, Covid management, treatment of Covid, etc.
We are bombarded every day with massive amounts of information and few tools to enable us to sift through this.
This letter hopes to address some of these issues and provide practical management of home care for Covid positive people.
Briefly, we will mention the following:
Please be level-headed and listen to people who do this for a living. You don’t buy shares at the café, nor do you buy meat at the hardware store. Rather, look for someone in the business, has a track record of integrity and reliability, and most importantly, common sense.
The Practice uses guidelines laid down by expert organisations in the field, such as:
- The UK’s NICE guidelines (National Institute of clinical excellence). NICE is a non-commercial government-sponsored organisation that brings out algorithms for the management of diseases.
- The Cochrane Institute in the US. The Cochrane Institute is similar in composition to NICE in the UK and is also non-commercialised.
- The Practice also makes use of reports emanating from:
- Centre for disease control in Atlanta (CDC)
- World Health Organisation bulletins (WHO)
- National Communicative and Infectious Diseases Institute (NCID) – our South African equivalent of the CDC and closely aligned to the CDC and WHO.
Incidentally, it’s an excellent organisation and runs all of Africa.
A brief synopsis of the plan of action if you have Covid:
- Essential management at home and how we are planning to monitor you in your home environment
- When do we admit you hospital, should you need to go – again, we will advise and monitor developments and send you to the most appropriate place, should it be necessary.
- When you’re in hospital: we will keep regular contact with your doctor and leas any information with your family How this will work:
If you turn in a positive Covid test, we will send you a Detailed Form (A). Please fill this form in, as this will give us a baseline of your problem. The forms can be accessed from the Forms tab on the site.
Each morning we will send you an Update Form (B) to monitor your progress. Please fill this in and email it back to the Practice. With this information we will plan your treatment with you and arrange for you to be managed effectively at home. We will be available either by phone or email to ensure you remain in good hands. We recommend this be done daily until any crisis is passed. In this way, we feel you’ll be confident that you are being cared for and that someone with experience is watching over you. You will not be alone in this illness.
We will also continually update current questions such as, amongst others, the ivermectin use controversy, the concern of clots side effect when taking the vaccine and how long the immunity lasts after being vaccinated.
We also welcome any other questions which you may have. We can assure you that many others will want to ask the same question.
If you look on the website at https://thevinesfamilypractice.co.za, there is information that may interest you.
We feel it’s important to be fair and thus we will charge a nominal fee for this service.
I hope that this meets your expectations as our desire for our new format of Practice is simply:
“Keep you safe and give you the best traditional family practice service in town.”
Kind Regards,
