“During times of crisis, essential health services often decline - which can ultimately kill more people than the pandemic itself. One of the pandemic’s greatest dangers is interrupting care for other conditions, by overwhelming already under-resourced health systems. For example, during the Ebola epidemic, access to healthcare services fell by half, dramatically increasing deaths from malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis. The vulnerable bore the brunt of the pandemic: childhood immunizations were significantly reduced and, in some areas, the number of pregnant women delivering in health facilities decreased by more than 80 percent.” ~ Ballard et al. 2020
As COVID-19 began to spread around the world, several people from the Research & Learning team at Medic Mobile worked with a team of about 30 other scientists and community health practitioners to rapidly draft a position paper, Priorities for the Global COVID-19 Response: The Role for Community Health. This paper outlines four critical priorities:
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PROTECT health care workers
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INTERRUPT the virus
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MAINTAIN existing health care services while surging their capacity
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SHIELD the most vulnerable from socioeconomic shocks
The priority placed on maintaining existing services reflects an important insight: that major outbreaks often have a range of indirect impacts on the health of communities.
At Medic Mobile, a number of members of our Research & Learning team have been engaged in proactively monitoring the impact of COVID-19 - and associated global, national, and place-based policies in response to the pandemic - using a subset of community health impact metrics focused on maintenance of primary care.
These metrics are aligned with a broader set of metrics used by members of the Community Health Impact Coalition in metrics harmonization efforts, and include the following categories:
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CHW Activity
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Household Coverage
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ANC/PNC
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iCCM, Immunization & Malnutrition
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Family Planning
We have been generating reports on these monitoring data at a varying level of frequency, and sharing our findings with CHT implementing partners in order to drive iteration and adaptation of workflows to support care delivery and ensure disruptions are mitigated. As we continue this work, we will also be posting updates on our findings to the forum in order to engage our community with this valuable work!