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This paper aims to deal with the impact of COVID-19 on the livelihoods of disadvantaged persons living in slums in Kenya. Months after the first case of COVID-19 was reported in Kenya in March 2020, most of the studies that have been carried out pertaining to its impact on slum dwellers have concentrated on narrowly defined concerns e.g. the impact of COVID-19 on youth, gender based violence and nutrition. It is thus difficult to get a clear global picture of the overall impact of COVID-19 on the livelihoods of slum dwellers in Kenya. This paper relies on information gathered during a comprehensive qualitative micro study covering numerous aspects of slum dwellers' livelihoods, as well as information that has been produced by the Ministry of Health, civil society organizations that work in specific slums, private research organizations as well as local and foreign media houses. The slums whose information is reported in this paper were selected to be indicative of the over 300 slums that are located in Nairobi and Mombasa, the two most important cities in Kenya. The analysis concludes that slum dwellers were potentially at a higher risk under the pressures of COVID-19 of deteriorating conditions with regard to the provision of health services, employment, gender-based violence, education and youth-related problems, and human rights violations, and offers several recommendations to the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, public health measures like face masks, hand hygiene and maintaining social distancing have been implemented to delay and reduce local transmission of COVID-19. To date there is emerging evidence to provide effectiveness and compliance to intervention measures on COVID-19 due to rapid spread of the disease. We synthesized evidence of community interventions and innovative practices to mitigate COVID-19 as well as previous respiratory outbreak infections which may share some aspects of transmission dynamics with COVID-19. In the study, we systematically searched the literature on community interventions to mitigate COVID-19, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), H1N1 Influenza and MERS (middle east respiratory syndrome) epidemics in PubMed, Google Scholar, World Health Organization (WHO), MEDRXIV and Google from their inception until May 30, 2020 for up-to-date published and grey resources. We screened records, extracted data, and assessed risk of bias in duplicates. We rated the certainty of evidence according to Cochrane methods and the GRADE approach. This study is registered with PROSPERO (CRD42020183064). Of 41,138 papers found, 17 studies met the inclusion criteria in various settings in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). One of the papers from LMICs originated from Africa (Madagascar) with the rest from Asia 9 (China 5, Bangladesh 2, Thailand 2); South America 5 (Mexico 3, Peru 2) and Europe 2 (Serbia and Romania). Following five studies on the use of face masks, the risk of contracting SARS and Influenza was reduced OR 0.78 and 95% CI = 0.36–1.67. Equally, six studies on hand hygiene practices reported a reduced risk of contracting SARS and Influenza OR 0.95 and 95% CI = 0.83–1.08. Further two studies that looked at combined use of face masks and hand hygiene interventions showed the effectiveness in controlling the transmission of influenza OR 0.94 and 95% CI = 0.58–1.54. Nine studies on social distancing intervention demonstrated the importance of physical distance through closure of learning institutions on the transmission dynamics of disease. The evidence confirms the use of face masks, good hand hygiene and social distancing as community interventions are effective to control the spread of SARS and influenza in LMICs. However, the effectiveness of community interventions in LMICs should be informed by adherence of the mitigation measures and contextual factors taking into account the best practices. The study has shown gaps in adherence/compliance of the interventions, hence a need for robust intervention studies to better inform the evidence on compliance of the interventions. Nevertheless, this rapid review of currently best available evidence might inform interim guidance on similar respiratory infectious diseases like Covid-19 in Kenya and similar LMIC context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]