Ankara Medical Journal (Jun 2020)
Covid-19 In Primary Healthcare
Abstract
The coronaviruses are a large family of viruses infecting animals or humans and causing diseases, including Middle East Respiratory Syndrome(MERS, MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome(SARS, SARS-CoV). The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 emerged in December 2019 at city of Wuhan, affecting respiratory system leading to pneumonia, pulmonary edema, Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, multiorgan failure and death. Treatment studies are still ongoing but hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, oseltamivir, favipravir with some other anti-virals and convolescent plasma therapy are prominent. Mortality rate of disease is 3,8% in the world, infesting many countries. Legal regulations have been made for public to reduce transmission. Family health centers are providing healthcare services to every individual, for example; children, pregnants, patients with chronic diseases, patients with any complaint and individuals applied for health papers. In such a pandemic family physicians also have to restrain the transmission of virus between those people who applied. Therefore triage is needed to determine the high risk patients as soon as possible. Both them and other patients are protected in that way. After the filiation is done, suspected case or COVID-19 contacted cases are kept in touch by family phyisicians to follow up their clinical status and check for isolation conditions. For all these reasons, we aimed to examine the family health centers coping with COVID-19.
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