Kangbai Jia Bainga, Sesay Umaru, Kangbai Desmond Maada, Kagbanda Fatmata Kacida
Department of Public Health, Njala University, Bo, Sierra Leone.
Mendewa Community Health Center, Bo, Sierra Leone.
BMC Infect Dis. 2024 Dec 21;24(1):1453. doi: 10.1186/s12879-024-10360-w.
Since the outbreak of the novel SARS-CoV-2 that caused COVID-19 in 2019, the government of Sierra Leone implemented immediate preventive measures to stop the disease from entering the country. On March 24, 2020, the country declared a state of emergency in response to the emerging global COVID-19 pandemic, even though no confirmed cases had been reported at that time. However, Sierra Leone recorded its first COVID-19 case later in March 2020. While there have been few scoping reviews to date, these primarily focuses on experiences from Western countries or expatriates. The main purpose of this scoping review is to document the various COVID-19 pandemic preparedness measures undertaken by the Sierra Leone health system, assess the impacts of the pandemic on health systems, and document the various responses of health systems implemented across different settings from a home-based perspective.
We searched peer-reviewed papers and articles under review or submitted for publication in Sierra Leone and the COVID-19 pandemic found in the Web of Science, Scopus, Pubmed, Google Scholar, MedRxiv, and Research Square databases. In addition, we examined gray literature, including Sierra Leone government reports and academic unpublished works on Sierra Leone's COVID-19 situation. Both quantitative and qualitative studies were analyzed, focusing on the Sierra Leone health system or on the essential health services provided by the Sierra Leone health system during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Few (48.7%) studies were multi-country studies (i.e., involving different countries and Sierra Leone). The majority (83.7%) were original articles published either in peer-reviewed journals or were deposited in preprint repositories; 10.9% were editorials, commentaries, or news reports; 1 (2.7%) was a working paper; and 1 (2.7%) was personal correspondence.
Sierra Leone's health system was partially prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic, largely due to its previous experience in managing the Ebola virus disease outbreaks from 2013 to 2016. However, the pandemic had significant impact on other health services. Although the country's response to the pandemic was swift, it fell below average in addressing the scale of the challenges posed by the crisis.
自2019年新型严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）引发新型冠状病毒肺炎（COVID-19）疫情以来，塞拉利昂政府立即采取预防措施，防止该疾病传入本国。2020年3月24日，尽管当时尚未报告确诊病例，但该国为应对全球范围内出现的COVID-19大流行宣布进入紧急状态。然而，塞拉利昂在2020年3月下旬记录了首例COVID-19病例。尽管迄今为止进行的范围界定审查较少，但这些审查主要集中在西方国家或外籍人士的经历上。本范围界定审查的主要目的是记录塞拉利昂卫生系统采取的各种COVID-19大流行防范措施，评估大流行对卫生系统的影响，并从家庭角度记录不同环境中卫生系统实施的各种应对措施。
我们在科学网、Scopus、PubMed、谷歌学术、MedRxiv和Research Square数据库中搜索了塞拉利昂以及COVID-19大流行相关的同行评审论文、正在评审或已提交发表的文章。此外，我们还查阅了灰色文献，包括塞拉利昂政府报告以及关于塞拉利昂COVID-19情况的学术未发表作品。对定量和定性研究均进行了分析，重点关注塞拉利昂卫生系统或塞拉利昂卫生系统在COVID-19大流行期间提供的基本卫生服务。
少数（48.7%）研究为多国研究（即涉及不同国家和塞拉利昂）。大多数（83.7%）是发表在同行评审期刊上或存于预印本库中的原创文章；10.9%是社论、评论或新闻报道；1篇（2.7%）是工作论文；1篇（2.7%）是个人通信。
塞拉利昂卫生系统对COVID-19大流行做了部分准备，这很大程度上归因于其此前在2013年至2016年期间应对埃博拉病毒病疫情的经验。然而，大流行对其他卫生服务产生了重大影响。尽管该国对大流行的应对迅速，但在应对危机带来的挑战规模方面低于平均水平。
