the VDRs’ COVID19 Response WASH Initiative - in a nutshell
COVID-19 Response Fund
One year on from equipping our service users with WASH station and supplies, we continue to provide frontline health care workers in Africa with Covid guidelines as endorsed by the local Ministry of Health.
The Virtual Doctors’ COVID-19 Response Fund was launched on 22 April 2020 to support our ongoing partnership with the Zambian Government (helping them improve access to quality health care) and their effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, with the aim to ensure that we can continue to provide vital telemedicine and educational support to the 215 health centres we work with in rural Zambia.
After surveying 100 of sites we support in order to assess their readiness to respond to Covid-19 back in March, the Virtual Doctors (VDrs) devised a dual approach to fight the spread of the pandemic in rural communities: Water Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) and Education, by providing our service users (frontline health workers) with Covid-19 prevention WASH kits to their health facilities and educational resources directly onto their VDrs-issued devices in addition to Covid information posters and stickers in English as well as key local languages.
“Virtual doctors as an organisation is a true and dedicated partner in fight against the disease burden in our communities. It feels so great to be part of this organization and thank u for making our work much lighter as clinicians.”
(Service user Lawrence, Chibombo health facility)
We raised an amazing £42,000 thanks to our supporters!
We have also received some very exciting Media Coverage including Social Media campaigns Johnson & Johnson's #BackTheFrontline and ONE's #PassTheMic: one of our Volunteer Virtual Doctors, Dr Martin Dedicoat was handed over Welsh actor Michael Sheen's Twitter account for a day to share his expertise and experience during the pandemic.
Download our Covid-19 Response Report here
VDRs service user Victor Mulenga, Clinical Officer at Zambia Helpers Society Hospital, Chilanga, using their VDrs wash basin
WASH kits ready to go, with hygiene products packed in their matching wash stations
We are incredibly grateful for your support as well as to our Field Team in Zambia, who have worked wonders on the procurement of equipment to secure an average price of £190 per Covid-prevention kit.
Pictured above and left, these consist of:
A foot pump-operated wash basin – K2,000/£80
3 months of consumables (antiseptic liquid, hand wash, hand sanitizers, gloves, mask, towels, bar soap) – K 2255/£90
Covid-19 prevention through hygiene posters – K 500/£20
“The WASH commodities that were distributed to us have really helped the facility. We are really grateful for all the things you gave us to help fight the coronavirus. This shows us that you really care about us”
(Service User Pecidah, (pictured left) Nampundwe health facility)
What we have achieved so far with those funds
By July 2020 we had equipped all the 140 health facilities we supported at the time. We have since deployed our service along with the Covid prevention WASH kits to a further 75 health facilities, taking us to 215 sites across the country using the VDrs telemedicine service while also being fully equipped to fight the spread of Covid. We were able to deliver below budget, allowing us to go further with our generous donors’ contribution.
The funding also allowed us to further collaborate with the Ministry of Health on the design, production and dissemination of vital Government sanctioned Covid prevention and management information: first of all posters and stickers in English and the main local languages to deliver along with the WASH kits as well as how-to videos, but most importantly, the digitisation (video animations) of government-sanctioned paper-based curriculum and resources. These enable our service users to avoid the risk Covid from travel and physical training courses, but also means more time spent focused on their patients instead.
Sample stills of the animations. We were able to reduce these costs to £215 per service user.
Going above and beyond
We have made our Covid Response initiative part of the New Normal and now provide WASH supplies with our telemedicine devices whenever we introduce the service to a new site in rural Zambia. This ensures that each health facility is better equipped to combat the pandemic.
Covid travel restrictions have changed the way we train Clinical Officers (CO’s) and set up our service in new health facilities: instead of sending our team into the field to deliver devices and training, we work with Ministry of Health colleagues to send Covid kits and telemedicine devices to the local District Health Office by bus, where they are then sent on to the designated Rural Health Centres.
We have also developed a new, virtual, training model based on a “Training the Trainers” (ToT) concept: Clinical Care Officers (CCOs) (most senior COs responsible for managing all COs in their district) are trained remotely over Zoom by the VDrs team in Lusaka, so that they are able to train COs in their Districts to use the VDrs telemedicine service. On the day of training, 6-10 CO’s are trained together at the DHO by the CCO’s. The training is backed up with support from the team in Lusaka via Zoom.
A comprehensive training manual and user guide are sent to the CCO’s via WhatsApp with a supporting training video ‘how to create a Virtual Doctors (VDrs) case’ in two of the seven official vernacular languages of Zambia.
Clinical Liaison Specialist Pralin Koongo dispensing virtual training from the VDRs Lusaka office.
This new model not only allows us to by-pass Coronavirus-related obstacles but will also enable us to redirect cost savings towards COVID-19 prevention activities and beyond – an exciting development and direction for the Virtual Doctors: turning a threat into an opportunity and going further Virtually while continuing to enrich the quality of healthcare service delivery where it’s needed most.
Above: WASH kit arriving at Chilanga District Health Office
Left: VDRs’ Pralin demonstrating how to set up the foot-operated basins
How it all started: We surveyed over 100 of the health centres that we support to assess their ability to respond to COVID-19 and devised a plan to further collaborate with the Ministry of Health in addressing the needs of many Zambian healthcare workers’ access to simple hand washing facilities.
The Plan
WASH Initiative: As no vaccine exists to prevent COVID-19, the best way to prevent it is to avoid being exposed to it in the first place: hand washing and cleaning and disinfecting frequently touched surfaces are of vital importance.
Solution:
We aim to provide the 140 health centres we support with foot-operated hand washing basins that can be used by both staff and patients.
On average up to 150 patients will visit each health centre every day!
It is therefore essential that we also provide enough soaps, sanitisers, cleaning and disinfecting products, to account for this.
We intend to provide an initial 3 month supply of these products and this initiative will then be taken up by the Ministry of Health.
Education Initiative: Another crucial component of what we do is our virtual education hub that aims to support the clinical officers with their ongoing education and professional development.
Our specific plans under this initiative focus on developing resources to help the clinical officers on the ground with managing the emerging situation within Zambia.
Solution: Working closely with the Ministry of Health, we aim to produce and share resources that address the COVID-19 pandemic, looking specifically at how it can be managed in low resource settings like rural Zambia.
We have been developing appropriate online education resources including websites, videos, podcasts and open access e-learning modules.
This are distributed via our telemedicine portal to offer infection prevention and control advice to the clinical officers we work with and also distribute appropriate health promotion posts to the health centres.
Our resulting Covid-19 Resource Bank is now live: read the press release here, find out more here and visit it here.
