Intra-Action Review of Ethiopian’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, July 2022

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on health, society, and the economy globally and in Ethiopia. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the use of intra-action reviews (IARs) to identify best practices, gaps, and lessons learned to make real-time improvements to the COVID-19 response. The International Health Regulations (2005) has recommended that countries share COVID-19 best practices and lessons learned with peer countries through IARs. Using WHO established methodology, we conducted the IAR of Ethiopian’s COVID-19 response from Hamle, 2021 to Hamle 2022. The review covered 11 thematic areas(pillars): (1)country-level coordination, planning and monitoring; (2) Regional coordination and risk communication and community engagement; (3) Vulnerable population, (4) Epi-surveillance, (5) laboratory, (6) Point of entry, (7) Case management and HBIC, (8) IPC, (9) MHPSS, (10) Admin section, (11) Digitalization. We held six focus group discussions with a variety of stakeholders from a range of government departments and non-governmental organizations. We used the results of the focus group discussions and other key findings from the IAR to formulate recommendations. The IAR identified key areas for improvement at national and subnational levels across all 11 pillars. Priority recommendations included improving multispectral coordination and monitoring of COVID-19 response plan indicators; strengthening implementation of public health response measures, including case detection, isolation, infection prevention and control, contact tracing; and improving data collection, analysis, and reporting to inform public health risk assessment and response. The IAR is a useful tool for reviewing progress and identifying areas to improve the COVID-19 response in real time and provides a means to share information on areas of need with COVID-19 response partners and contributes to International Health Regulations (2005) core capacity development.