Psychosocial care for contacts of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Touba, Senegal

Abstract

Senegal, like many countries in the world, has been facing the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2, 2020. Psychosocial care for people who are victims of this unexpected and potentially fatal event is essential. As soon as the first cases were registered in Senegal with the announcement of the first cluster in the town of Touba, 150km from Dakar, on March 12, 2020, the country's health authorities set up a multidisciplinary team on the spot with a cell operational psychosocial. This unit has set up for a hundred direct and indirect victims immediate and post-immediate individual and/or group care with home visits. Beyond the therapeutic and support aspect of the psychosocial care of these victims of COVID-19, this intervention allowed the decision-making level to have feedback from the field on certain actions that posed more problems than they did not resolve. The psychosocial field work made it possible to model and adjust the interventions in a particular context of denial by the local population.