The COVID-19 pandemic response in Cambodia has accelerated the development of local preparedness capacities that will help enable effective decision-making during any influenza pandemic.
Cambodia’s Master Plan for COVID-19 emphasizes, among other things, the need to strengthen local preparedness so that all provinces are ready for a quick response to any new outbreak of COVID-19, influenza or other respiratory pathogen. With technical and operational support from WHO, including through the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework Partnership Contribution, the Ministry of Health is delivering a package of activities at provincial levels designed to strengthen local capacities for surveillance, risk assessment and rapid response. This includes:
- training and coaching in multisource surveillance;
- webinars on using risk assessment within an incident management system (IMS);
- simulation exercises in contact tracing; and
- conducting intra action reviews.
These activities do appear to be improving local preparedness. For example, the surveillance training has improved understanding of surveillance concepts and increased the use of surveillance data to understand and respond to epidemiological situations in each province. In provinces with sentinel ILI & SARI sites, national and provincial focal points have improved their analysis of multiple sources of information, including health facility consultation rates and test positivity rates as a means for monitoring disease trends.
The IMS webinars have similarly boosted local capacities, supporting provincial health leaders to recognize the value of using risk assessments to inform decision-making. Building on this, the country aims to transition to provincial-led risk assessments.
The simulation exercises have also been beneficial. In these, participants were tasked with going into the field and investigating cases, tracing contacts, and obtaining health-centre data as part of a multi-source approach to rapid response. These exercises significantly enhanced cross-sectoral collaboration for contact tracing between health and non-health sectors and strengthened the country’s whole-of-society approach to pandemic response.
Experience in delivering the local preparedness activities in Cambodia suggests that provincial capacities are best developed one step at a time, using methods such as follow-up meetings and regular on-site coaching to build confidence and capability.
Looking ahead, the goal is to achieve strong provincial capabilities in using multisource surveillance data for risk assessments that will ensure effective operational and strategic decision-making during the ongoing and any future pandemic. So far the local preparedness activities have been delivered in 18 out of 25 provinces, with the remaining seven due to be covered by early 2022.