July 8, 2020 Europe Publication

Supporting older people in remote areas in a post COVID-19 time

The COVID-19 pandemic, like other disasters, undermines older people´s capacity and chances of survival as a result especially of emergency induced mental health and psychological problems, and the breakdown in services for preventing and treating chronic conditions and for providing social support. Furthermore, maintaining relationships is often identified by older people as central to their wellbeing, but social distancing has transformed the lives of everyone in society and has changed relationships and personal contact as well. Here, we set out how the COVID-19 pandemic affects older people in remote areas specifically.

March 9, 2021

Overcoming barriers to maternal and newborn care through integrated facility and community-based services

There has been growing interest and experience of community health workers (CHWs) in recent years, especially with the goal of Universal Health Coverage. Typically, the CHWs have provided combinations of health promotion messages, treatment of childhood illnesses, malaria-control measures, nutrition interventions, family planning, and screening and supervised treatment for HIV and TB. Many CHW programs function semi-autonomously with supplies and supervision coming with varying regularity from health facilities.

For many years, this community-based health care approach included the training of traditional birth attendants (TBAs). TBAs were, for the most part, given short training courses and sent back to their communities with little or no continuing connection with health facilities. The approach was halted twenty years ago when it became clear that trained TBAs were not making any impact on maternal and newborn deaths from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. A Skilled Birth Attendant (SBA) policy, to train and deploy greater ...