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

初步报告显示，COVID-19大流行应对措施对全球常规医疗需求就诊人数产生了影响。人们提出的潜在原因包括，公众由于担心感染COVID-19而不去医疗中心，以及在封锁期间人们很难前往医疗中心。该项目将研究东非、西非和中非三个国家的产前保健、免疫接种和艾滋病毒治疗服务等常规服务的使用率是否受到COVID-19大流行的影响。如果出勤率受到影响，可能会对与COVID-19无关的健康问题产生重大不利影响，例如怀孕结果、儿童感染其他传染病的风险和艾滋病毒的结果。重要的是，各国卫生部必须掌握这一信息，以便规划适当的应对措施，确保提供服务，并鼓励民众恢复求医。该项目提出的建议将有助于为应对当前的COVID-19危机和未来的大规模疫情提供信息。

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.