On 14 April, WHO released a COVID-19 updated strategic preparedness and response plan, outlining the strategic public health measures the global community may provide in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan encourages each country to implement a National Action Plan based on a whole of society approach involving stakeholders at all levels to slow down disease transmission and reduce mortality. Every national strategy and national plan has a crucial part to play in controlling the disease and must set out the basis for:
(a) coordination of the national and subnational response;
(b) engagement and mobilization of affected and at-risk communities;
(c) implementation of context-appropriate public health measures to slow transmission and control sporadic cases;
(d) preparation of the health system to reduce COVID19 associated mortality, maintain essential health services and protect health workers; and
(e) contingency planning to ensure continuity of essential public functions and services.
WHO is continuing to support the Indonesian Ministry of Health (MoH) to develop and implement the national COVID-19 response plan. The response plan is based on pandemic risk management, using a whole of society approach and linking pandemic response with the national disaster framework. The response plan outlines pandemic risk management components covering command and coordination, surveillance and laboratory, medical response, pharmaceutical intervention, business continuity planning for essential health services and other essential sectors, and risk communications.
Each province in Indonesia faces a different situation, context and capacity to deal with COVID-19, however, due to the current circumstances, travel to each location to review individual approaches is not possible. Therefore, between 15-21 April, WHO supported MoH and the National Board of Disaster Management to organize an interactive video conference discussion with all 34 provincial health offices on provincial response planning and the implementation of COVID-19 guidelines. Over the week, the discussion was divided into 10 video conference sessions with three or four provinces attending each session.
During the calls, the Ministry of Health shared the updated COVID-19 guideline, the Health Crisis Centre, MoH, and National Board of Disaster Management conveyed the national COVID-19 response plan for Indonesia and outlined how the plan can be adapted to meet the needs at a provincial level. Each provincial health office shared their experiences on developing localized COVID-19 response plans, and the discussion allowed participants to identify ways to improve response planning and address the challenges of a COVID-19 response.
The Crisis Centre, MoH, also explained the WHO Essential Supply Forecasting Tool (ESFT) to enable provinces to forecast essential supply for COVID-19, such as personal protective equipment (PPE), biomedical equipment, and laboratory diagnostics (reagents, Viral Transport Media). The ESFT can be used in addition to the adapt tool for forecasting the number of patients, beds, and human resources required.
Caption: During the video conference, the 34 provinces conveyed their respective COVID-19 situations and discussed the development of whole of community provincial response planning. Credit: Endang Wulandari/WHO
Most provinces have already developed a localized response plan and thanks to the video conference, the provinces will now be able to enhance their plans based on all-inclusive pandemic risk management considerations such as:
- Command and coordination: COVID-19 provincial task force, monitoring of response plan implementation, and evaluation.
- Surveillance and laboratory: Case definition, enhanced contact tracing, active surveillance for detection of cases, patient isolation, quarantine, management and monitoring of contacts, expand laboratory testing capacity, reporting and recording.
- Medical response: Treatment of patients, referral system, infection prevention and control, and expansion of referral hospitals and use of other facilities as COVID-19 treatment centers.
- Pharmaceutical intervention: Needs projection and provision of essential medical supplies and equipment, supportive treatments and PPE for healthcare workers.
- Non-pharmaceutical intervention: large scale social restrictions such as school closure, working from home restriction for travelling etc., business continuity planning of essential business and health services such as reproductive health, noncommunicable diseases, immunization, and quarantine facilities.
- Risk communication and community empowerment: Information, education and communication materials to target high risk populations, public, involving religious leaders and community leaders, spoke person, and media centres.
The video conference also addressed how transparent and reliable epidemiological information is key in response planning for generating a reliable risk assessment to guide response decisions and action. The provinces were reminded that regularly monitoring the indicators of COVID-19 action plan implementation is essential for prompt actions to halt COVID-19 transmission.
Upon completing the video conference on response planning, all provinces will now review and improve their COVID-19 response plans, referring to the outline presented during the discussions. By unifying the provinces and their plans through a video conference, the overall COVID-19 response planning effort in Indonesia is benefited and a stronger whole of society approach enables comprehensive action to be taken at both the national and grassroots level.
Main image caption: An interactive discussion on COVID-19 Response Planning was held via video conference with 34 provinces, in mid-April. Credit: Endang Wulandari/WHO