Domestic flights in Kenya to go paper less

Covid – 19 has made many institutions to change their modes of operations. While most are embracing the digitization of their work flow, a number of new structural methods of operations had to be done to avert infections in case any amongst the staff. Last year the Ministry of Health introduced an “EARs” system as dubbed used at the Emergency Operations Center to capture, report, and view emerging epidemics across the country. The system was to provide crucial data for decision making and epidemic control measures at the national and county levels. The Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on Friday 18^th June, 2021 will embrace a replica system of mHealth Kenya dubbed “Jitenge” for its passengers and airlines.

According to a press release released for the public on 14^th June, 2021, the Office of the Port health has called on all domestic airlines to go digital in their bookings and flight plans. The Kenya Airport Authority had carried out a pilot system of “Jitenge” a few weeks ago, which according to the press release, it went on successful according to their staged demands.

The online system which bares the same name with the one introduced by the mHealth last year does not function the same way despite the normative resemblance. The former by the mHealth main objective was developed as a module of the Emergency Alert and Reporting System (EARS) used by the Ministry of Health’s Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) to respond to over 40 infectious diseases.

It allowed users to either self-register or are registered by various Ministry of Health officials at the quarantine initiation point for home quarantine, at the quarantine facilities, and of the point of entries by port health officials. This was among the first response strategies laid down by the Ministry almost a month later after the first case of covid-19 was reported in the country.

The new “Jitenge” online system by KAA is a Digital Domestic Travel Locator Card. this provides an appropriate method of rapidly collecting passenger contact information and is recommended to be used when public health authorities suspect the potential for disease transmission on board an aircraft and a subsequent need for contact tracing. It enables the health officers protect an extensive infections of Covid – 19 in the country considering the different waves in the country and the ever mutating variants which nowadays even go unnoticeable by the public.

“The Ministry of Health has developed domestic travels locator card system and is ready for operationalization. All domestic airlines should inform the travelers through their various channels of communication that we (KAA) on Friday 18^th June 2021shall go paper less at domestic arrivals,” said the press release by the airports health authority.

However, the authority warned in that there will be no daily submission of health status by the regular methods as before. Among the countries which shifted into these state of health rigorous scrutiny at the airports are the United Kingdom, Brazil, Italy, the United States of America, the Middle East, and India among others which were severely hit by the pandemic.

Kenya becomes the first one in East Africa to digitize fully the health protective operationalization of the airports and its clients. Most of the other countries still use the old way of checks of Passenger Locater Forms (PLF).