The coronavirus pandemic has created significant challenges for all of us, and some countries and regions, already today, are confronted with a social, economic, and health crisis they haven’t seen and experienced since the end of the second world war. The measures introduced to “flatten the curve” of the outbreak will have to be maintained for the coming months in order to be effective and the wave of infections has not yet reached the most vulnerable populations living in many developing countries especially Africa.
We continue to closely monitor the situation in all the countries that we are working in to ensure that we take all necessary measures in time. First and foremost, our aim is to protect the health of all staff of our projects, our counterparts, partners and contractors. Secondly, we are discussing measures to help mitigating the tremendous strain, the pandemic will have on public health structures, and its socio-economic impact.
As a public health focused company with reach throughout many countries, we continue to actively support our partner organizations in the management of the emerging public health and socioeconomic crisis.
Concretely,
- To secure our own workforce we have implemented home office arrangements to the extent possible and as advised by local authorities. Here we are benefitting from our rather advanced use of digital technology introduced in our office and projects long before the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Our projects, experts as well as partners, are digitally linked to our main office to ensure continuous exchange and guidance for project management.
- Further, our project managers use various e-platforms and digital media to
- We are supporting our partners and project beneficiaries with the implementation of digital solutions that will help us to provide training and capacity building and to support (local / national) epidemiological surveillance, alert systems and early response.
With these and other upcoming measures we will be able to assure continued support to our project teams, to manage this global crisis to the best of our capabilities.
Once again, we remain committed to our core values and vision of contributing to Universal Health Coverage even in times of this global crisis.