The United States Embassy has donated 153000 reusable facemasks to Uasin Gishu County to support the fight against spiking cases of Covid-19.
Issuance of the masks will target very needy grade four and standard 8 students who are already in school.
The consignment was delivered to the county by the US Ambassador to Kenya Kyle McCarter on Tuesday and was received by Kapseret Deputy County Commissioner Joseph Satia and the and the Uasin Gishu County Health boss Everlyne Rotich.
Speaking while presenting the donation at the county commissioner’s office, Ambassador McCarter who was received on behalf of the County Commissioner Stephen Kihara by the DCC, said the US government will continue to help the county governments in every way possible as they continue to tackle the pandemic.
He said there was a need to increase testing so that those found with the disease could be attended to on time to save their lives.
“We don’t want our people to die, we want them to survive the disease and this will be achieved if the number of people tested increased,” he added.
McCarter further said they will focus their support on counties because the county governments were close to the people at the grassroots.
“The US government has in the past made investments with the national government, especially in the area of health which did not work sufficiently, we now want to work with the county governments that are smaller, better, more efficient, more sensitive and more effective”, he stressed.
Satia said the county committee will sit to strategize on how the donated masks will reach very vulnerable students.
“This is a good gesture from the US Embassy, the masks have come at the right time considering that not all students currently in school have masks which exposes them to the danger of being infected with Corona,” said the DCC.
By October 26, 2020 Uasin Gishu County had confirmed 1,354 Covid-19 positive cases with 459 current active cases.
Health CEC said 1,331 confirmed cases were from local transmissions and 23 were imported. The cases were from sampling and testing done by the county, Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) and private hospitals.
By Kiptanui Cherono
