Measuring unanticipated opportunity costs of South Africa's COVID-19 response for children, mothers, and people living with non-communicable diseases

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The SA government introduced a strict lockdown in response to the COVID-19 epidemic, providing extra hospital beds and widespread community testing and tracing. At the same time, SA has high levels of HIV (the highest number globally), Tuberculosis, undernutrition, obesity, Diabetes, and Hypertension as well as excessive levels of violence and trauma. By focusing only on COVID-19, providing the usual preventive and curative health services may have suffered. The fast response has reduced the voice of communities in decision-making. People stop attending health services either because of fear or because of temporary unavailability of services. This may have consequences for the health of women and children and people who live with chronic conditions. Our study aims to measure the impact of redirecting resources from routine health services and seeks to understand the perspective of health workers and communities about this repositioning of services. The project will focus on mother and child health, and on people with hypertension and diabetes, diseases that result in significant sickness and death. These analyses will shift the needle from assumptions to reality and show where the most lives are being lost, many of them not COVID-19 related. This can and will inform policy decisions for current and future epidemics.