WHO online courses on Covid 19 treatment ..

While discussing with one of my colleagues on how to make effective interventions in the Covid treatment scenario in our University,  it came upon me to learn something more about the Covid virus  treatment protocols  design of treatment centers etc. when I came across one of my friends speaking about World Health Organization (WHO) online courses.

WHO has been proactively involving itself, first with China, though it has been misunderstood very badly of late, to improve the awareness and preparedness of nations to meet the Covid 19 pandemic. There is no other international organisation like WHO that has the competitive ability to intervene across geographical boundaries to alleviate the harmful impact of the virus and to take effective steps to control the spread of the pandemic.

After downloading the OpenWHO app from Google store, I went through the courses being offered. Joined for the eProtect course and by Saturday evening completed. I found that this was one of the best ways to get authentic information about the virus and different treatments   there was no looking back. 

WHO DG Dr. Tedris Ghebreyesus Adhanom

By Monday 22 June morning 7.15 am, I had completed 4 WHO online courses. Certificate links given here with QR codes to assure the authenticity of the process.

1. Course 1 on eProtect Respiratory Infections

2. Course 2 on Emerging respiratory viruses, including COVID-19 :

methods for detection, prevention, response and control

3. Course 3 on COVID-19: Operational Planning Guidelines

and COVID-19 Partners Platform to support

country preparedness and response

4. Course 4 on designing a Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) treatment centre

5. Course 5 on Standard Procedure in hand hygiene 

6. Course 6 on Standard Precautions in Waste Management.

7. Course 7 on Environmental Cleaning and disinfection

8. Course 8 on How to put and remove PPE 

9. Course 9 on Decontamination and Sterilization of Medical Devices

10. Course 10 on Standard Precautions on Injection Safety and Needlestick Injury Management

The Kubler Ross grief cycle ..

The experience was unique.

Unfortunately these 6 courses never mentioned about the human stresses because of the Covid 19 infection and how to handle these stresses effectively.

The Kubler-Ross grief cycle (given here) is a curve that gives the various stages through which people pass when overcome with real grief (or anticipatory grief) .

Click here for the HBR article of Mar '20 here ..

According to me, the migrant worker population in India are already in the descending part of the KR curve, given that they were the first in the country to go back to their native states. The office going staff are slightly up, yet to face reality .. After reaching the native states the workers are relaxed but the feeling of what next and where next has gripped them.. They are in the process of descending the curve fast ..

Will awareness of the harmful potential of the virus help them to explore alternate ways to face the life-crisis ? Will people for the time being, turn to agriculture, as a means to improve their livelihoods and overcome the desperation ?

George 

A role play on Design Thinking at Alliance University ..

Design Thinking comprises of a set of skills by which one is able to solve complex design problems and come up with innovative practical and economical solutions.

Though the process has been developed by David Kelly of IDEO, Professor at Stanford D-school, IDEO CEO has come with an interesting article in HBR in 2008.  Click here for my earlier writing on a Design Thinking Workshop at AU.

This write up is regarding a classroom Design Thinking exercise we had with students of sem 3 MBA on 9 June 2020, through the online mode. These days because of the Corona scare, all classes are happening virtually online through the MS TEAMS setup in AU.

We started with the empathising phase, which involves everyone in the exercise introducing themselves with an introduction, which essentially is the narration of an unfortunate event in the life of the participant till that time. The main purpose of this step is to ensure that the participant is able to recollect realistic situations with the deep meanings in the expressions and narration.

We entered the definition phase by identifying the problem we were going to work on. The issue of traffic congestion in different parts of Bangalore city was the one that came to our mind. We decided to do a design thinking exercise to find out the reasons why traffic congestion is high in Silk Board junction in Bangalore and possible steps to counter it.

In the next phase of Ideation, we embarked on a Brainstorming exercise to find out possible means by which traffic congestion could be reduced at Silk Board junction in Bangalore.

The brainstorming session created about 18 ideas with 3 rounds of 6 teams each, and then we narrowed down into 3 top ideas.

In the Prototype phase, we thought about the different steps that could be taken up to get the plan implemented. Since providing good connectivity between Metro and BMTC was one of the final 3 ideas that came up, we decided to ask govt and BMTC, Metro etc to have dedicated teams that would work to improve the connectivity between Metro and BMTC across Bangalore.

One the Govt accepts our recommendations, we are sure the traffic congestion issue in Bangalore, Silk Board junction will be solved to come etxnet, at least. .