Two-day meeting on Intra- Action (IAR) review for COVID-19 response in Vanuatu with the Ministry of Health COVID-19 response team puts way forward for better response in the future.
Meeting objective were to review the Management, coordination processes and implementation in relation to the COVID-19 community outbreak response, identify gaps, lessons learned and best practices and to plan for the next steps and improvement in COVID-19 preparedness and response.
Ministry of Health COVID-19 response team at the Intra-Action Review meeting
On day one, the team reflect on what went well and what did not went well during the past two years of COVID-19 response in Vanuatu. The activities that where in place prior to COVID-19 response were PCR testing, protocols for exposure in quarantine, sentinel sites were established, good testing capacity, there were plans for surge response, reporting mechanism were in place between lab, National surveillance and provinces.
Preparing the Health team, there were national contact tracing training, support from partners, vaccine safety system and also process for sending samples for genomic sequencing were in place.
During the IAR meeting, Director for the Corporate, Planning and Policy, Dr Samuel Posikai, Chairperson for the National Health Emergency Operation Centre, acknowledged all the efforts being done in the last two years.
“We have come a long way and see how far we have respond towards this pandemic. I could recall starting with a small team, stated Dr Posikai.
Recommendations were made for better response towards any unexpected events in future to have Provincial engagement and training to take place in timely manner and have better stock management of testing.
Also to strengthen training for notifications and provide proper training for surveillance officers in provinces. Provide turnaround time for PCR results, strengthen the information flow in all provinces and better enforcing business houses policies to employ health safety officers to ensure functions and to Strengthen reporting mechanisms with health facilities that are not appointed sentinel sites.
This meeting marked the 6th IAR meeting since COVID-19 preparedness and responses started in Vanuatu two years ago.