As old Covid-19 patients snap up scarce hospital beds, home isolation appears to be an increasingly viable option for the newly-infected.

Danphe Care, a Dillibazaar, Kathmandu-based healthcare management company, will help them do so. Started a month ago by a team doctors, pharmacists, nurses, and dietitians, it has a nine-member executive team, with another 30-35 medical personnel and experts working as advisors. Kabin Maleku, program coordinator at the center, says his team had anticipated the Covid-19 crisis and had been working on offering Covid-19 services for the past few months.

Maleku says around 80 percent of all Covid-19 patients can be treated in home isolation. “Why burden the healthcare system if you can treat yourself at home, right?” he asks. “If normal patients start occupying beds, those with severe symptoms will have to suffer.”

This realization, coupled with multiplying questions over the safety of isolation and quarantine facilities, are making more and more Covid-19 patients to opt for home isolation. For if a patient is admitted to an unmanaged and crowded isolation center, there is also a chance of their contracting other communicable diseases.

Danphe Care offers a 15-day home isolation package at Rs. 200 a day, offering support and care through virtual assistance and phone conversations as part of the package. Guidance on medical and emotional issues through daily symptoms checkups, regular intervention, medicine prescription, referral to the hospital and coordination with ambulance services when necessary, are the salient features of this package.

“We have a holistic approach to Covid care. Not only physical and mental care, we are also working on spiritual well-being of the patients under our watch,” adds Maleku.

“We categorize our patients and include in the package only those whom we can treat and monitor at their own homes,” says Dr Suyash Timalsina, medical coordinator at the center. 

On the first day, center experts conduct orientation as the patients may be ignorant of the disease and get panicky. After that, the team analyses patient health. Following an in-depth assessment, the patient’s condition is outlined. Only then do regular consultations with patients start. The patients are guided to keep themselves as well as their loved ones safe.

“If our monitoring proves inadequate, we seek help from other experts and specialist doctors,” adds Maleku. Offering diet plans, hygiene tips, yoga and meditation tips, and other practical knowledge are also part of the package.

If a patient needs hospitalization, the doctors who had been regularly following them also help them get admitted to a suitable hospital.

So who can use Dafne services? “Covid-19 patients and those who have come in contact with them,” replies Timalsina. Regular, 24/7, monitoring, he says, helps identify even minor changes in symptoms.

Having successfully monitored home isolation of over 70 patients, the center is planning to scale up to be able to treat 1,000 patients at a time. 

If you need home-isolation monitoring services, contact:

Kabin Maleku

Program Cordinator, Danphe Care

9802314742