The impact of COVID-19 on primary health care service provision and utilisation in Tanzania, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo

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Initial reports suggest the COVID-19 pandemic response has had an impact on the number of people seen for routine healthcare needs worldwide. Potential reasons suggested include the fact that the general public are not attending healthcare centres because they fear that they will contract COVID-19 and that it is difficult for people to travel for healthcare during lockdown. This project will look at whether the attendance of routine services, like antenatal care, immunisations and HIV treatment services, have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in 3 countries in East, West and Central Africa. If attendance has been affected, this could have a substantial detrimental effect on health problems that are unrelated to COVID-19, such as pregnancy outcomes, children's risk of contracting other infectious diseases and HIV outcomes. It will be important for the Ministries of Health of the respective countries to have this information in order to plan appropriate responses to ensure services are delivered and to encourage the population to resume seeking care. Recommendations resulting from this project will be useful to inform the response to the present COVID-19 crisis and future large outbreaks.