Ebola and Indirect Effects on Health Service Function in Sierra Leone

This study was carried out to provide data and guidance for agencies providing health care in Sierra Leone. The study was done in collaboration between the Ministry of Health and Sanitation in Sierra Leone, Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the Non Governmental Organization CapaCare, as part of a new surveillance initiative to monitor effects of the Ebola epidemic on health services. The director of research and Non-Communicable diseases (MS) and the Director of Laboratory and Hospitals (DB-T) of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation both approved the study. Since September 2014 we survey 61 governmental, private non- and for-profit healthcare facilities that offer in-patient care and major surgery. This represents all facilities that offer such care in Sierra Leone identified in a 2013 countrywide study that systematically mapped such facilities.6 The study did not include facilities providing inpatient tuberculosis or psychiatric care. For this study six facilities were excluded. Three because they only performed cataract surgery and three were closed in the whole of 2014. Hence 55 facilities were included. A pre-condition for the study was that data collection had to be simple, quick and not expose data collectors to EVD during data collection. We therefore decided to base the study on readily available facility data. We assumed that the number of general inpatient admissions and number of surgeries could serve as proxy ind...
Source: PLOS Currents Outbreaks - Category: Epidemiology Authors: Source Type: research