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

为了应对新冠肺炎疫情，南澳州政府引入了严格的封锁措施，提供了额外的医院床位，并进行了广泛的社区检测和追踪。与此同时，南非的艾滋病毒水平很高(全球最高)，结核病、营养不良、肥胖、糖尿病和高血压，以及过度的暴力和创伤。由于只关注新冠肺炎，提供通常的预防和治疗医疗服务可能会受到影响。快速的反应减少了社区在决策中的发言权。人们不再接受卫生服务，要么是因为恐惧，要么是因为暂时得不到服务。这可能会对妇女和儿童以及患有慢性病的人的健康产生影响。我们的研究旨在衡量从常规卫生服务重新分配资源的影响，并试图了解卫生工作者和社区对服务重新定位的看法。该项目将侧重于母亲和儿童健康，以及高血压和糖尿病患者，这两种疾病会导致重大疾病和死亡。这些分析将把重点从假设转移到现实中，并显示出死亡人数最多的地方，其中许多人与新冠肺炎无关。这能够并将为当前和未来流行病的政策决策提供信息。

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.