Ministry of Health and Population, Government of Nepal, Kathmandu, Nepal.
World Health Organization Country Office for Nepal, Lalitpur, Nepal.
PLoS One. 2024 Oct 16;19(10):e0308941. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0308941. eCollection 2024.
Nepal established the health partner coordination for COVID-19 response based on national and international plans and framework to support information-sharing for decision- making and course correction. This paper aims to assess the performance of COVID-19 Health Partner Coordination response in Nepal by adopting coordination best practices and tools from the international humanitarian cluster system.
Secondary data from unpublished documents on health partner coordination for COVID-19 response in Nepal was collected and analysed from April 2023 to May 2023. The secondary data were from the review of the health partner coordination meetings conducted for COVID-19 response using a researcher-developed document review tool, responses of health partners on a survey tool adapted from the cluster coordination performance monitoring tool from the Global Health Cluster, and transcript of Focused Group Discussion among health partners. Descriptive analysis of quantitative information and thematic analysis with predefined themes of qualitative information were performed using MS Excel and MS Word respectively. A written approval from the Ministry of Health and Population and an ethical clearance from the Nepal Health Research Council was obtained before conducting the study.
More than three-fifths of the meetings showed good results in conduction, process, participation, and documentation of meeting action points with improvement required for follow-up (22.2%). Assessment of health partner coordination subfunctions resulted in either 'good' (>75.0%) or 'satisfactory' (50.1%-75.0%) except for prioritization based on analyses, which was 'unsatisfactory' (<50%). Partners admired good practices of health partner coordination, pointed out some issues, and provided recommendations.
COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of effective coordination of health sector for response to a pandemic. Continuation of this practice after addressing the areas for improvement will contribute to health preparedness and readiness for future disasters or public health emergencies.
尼泊尔根据国家和国际计划和框架，建立了 COVID-19 应对卫生合作伙伴协调机制，以支持信息共享，为决策和调整方向提供依据。本文旨在采用国际人道主义群组系统的协调最佳实践和工具，评估尼泊尔 COVID-19 卫生合作伙伴协调应对的表现。
从 2023 年 4 月至 5 月，收集并分析了尼泊尔 COVID-19 应对卫生合作伙伴协调的未发表文件中的二手数据。二手数据来自对 COVID-19 应对卫生合作伙伴协调会议的审查，审查使用了研究人员开发的文件审查工具；来自卫生合作伙伴对从全球卫生群组协调表现监测工具改编的调查工具的回复；以及卫生合作伙伴之间的焦点小组讨论记录。使用 MS Excel 和 MS Word 分别对定量信息进行描述性分析，对定性信息进行主题分析，并使用预定义主题。在进行研究之前，获得了卫生和人口部的书面批准以及尼泊尔卫生研究委员会的伦理批准。
超过五分之三的会议在会议进行、过程、参与和会议行动点记录方面表现良好，需要改进后续工作（22.2%）。对卫生合作伙伴协调子功能的评估结果要么是“良好”（>75.0%），要么是“满意”（50.1%-75.0%），除了基于分析的优先级，这是“不满意”（<50%）。合作伙伴赞赏卫生合作伙伴协调的良好做法，指出了一些问题，并提出了建议。
COVID-19 凸显了有效协调卫生部门应对大流行的重要性。在解决需要改进的领域后继续实施这一做法，将有助于为未来的灾害或突发公共卫生事件做好卫生准备和应对准备。
