admin The COVID-19 pandemic is weakening the health systems worldwide. A brisk increase in demand for health facilities and health care workers threatens to leave some health systems unable to operate effectively.
“The best defense against any outbreak is a strong health system,” stressed WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “COVID-19 is revealing how fragile many of the world’s health systems and services are, forcing countries to make difficult choices on how to best meet the needs of their people.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has updated operational planning guidelines in keeping the balance of demands for responding directly to COVID-19 while maintaining essential health service delivery, and mitigating the risk of system collapse to help countries navigate through these challenges. Which includes a set of aims to take immediate actions those countries should consider at national, regional, and local level to reorganize and maintain access to high-quality essential health services for all.
Countries all around the world need to identify essential services which will be prioritized in their efforts to take care of service delivery and make strategic shifts to ensure that increasingly limited resources provide maximum benefit for the population. They would also need to adhere with the highest standard in precautions, hygiene practices, and the provision of adequate supplies including personal protective equipment.
A few example of essential services include: routine vaccination; reproductive health services including care during pregnancy and childbirth; care of young infants and older adults; management of mental health conditions as well as no communicable diseases and infectious diseases like HIV, malaria and TB; critical inpatient therapies; management of emergency health conditions; auxiliary services like basic diagnostic imaging, laboratory services, and blood bank services, among others. The guidelines stress the importance of keeping abreast information. This will demand frequent communications with the civilians including strong community engagements, so the public can maintain trust in the system to safely meet their essential needs and to control infection risk in health facilities. To make sure that people continue to seek care when appropriate, and follow to public health advice.
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