Posted December 16, 2020 Impact Area Malaria
By Katherine Kemp, PMI Impact Malaria Communications Coordinator. Editorial and content contributions from Lorina McAdam, Jacob Odentz, and Anne Bulchis, all with PMI Impact Malaria.
In March, when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic, PMI Impact Malaria (IM)-supported countries had just detected their first cases of COVID-19. By May, IM’s mandate began to include supporting Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Ghana in their pandemic response efforts. Now, nine months into the pandemic, the three countries and IM have learned key lessons from responding to COVID-19, namely the importance of thinking innovatively to adapt standard training approaches, collecting and using data to inform decision making, and rapidly creating and sharing updated guidelines.