Dear HIFA and CHIFA colleagues,
Below are selected extracts from the child health section of the official WHO guidance (2020): Maintaining essential health services: operational guidance for the COVID-19 context interim guidance (June 2020), and a comment from me below. The guidance is available here: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-2019-nCoV-essential-health-s...
--
Where possible, integrate child- and adolescent-targeted messaging (49) through mass and digital media into national and subnational communication strategies. Broadcast educational programmes on TV and radio during school closures.
Establish tele-health mechanisms for the provision of counselling about preventing NCDs and provide brief interventions on substance use prevention and sexuality.
Assess the impact of differential access to health information and education during school closures.
Create contingency plans to provide mental health services during school closures for students who mainly rely on school-based services.
Consider using digital platforms to provide psychosocial support and for early detection and management of mental health conditions.
Intensify classroom-based socioemotional learning after schools reopen.
Enhance opportunities for young people and their families to access mental health and psychosocial support services.
Adopt alternative strategies to inform adolescents about where and how to access SRH and HIV information and services.
Establish tele-health mechanisms for individual counselling of adolescents that adhere to the principles of confidentiality and noncoercive decision-making.
If available, engage community groups and youth networks to extend the provision of SRH and HIV information and services
Inform adolescents – males and females – where and how to get support and care in case of intimate partner violence or sexual violence. Use the media, if possible.
Advise health workers about the heightened risk to adolescents of intimate partner violence and sexual violence and the need to provide support and care discreetly and to ensure confidentiality.
Establish helplines and safe houses, if possible.
Advocate with authorities to ensure that menstrual hygiene products are included in lists of priority health products to mitigate supply disruption.
Provide information to girls and women about alternative, reusable menstrual health products.
--
Comment: I invite HIFA and CHIFA members to provide feedback on the guidance and suggestions for how the guidance might be improved and updated (a new edition is currently in planning). What do you find useful (or not so useful) about the guidance? How can it be improved?
I think perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of this guidance is that it has to cover so much material - Operational strategies, life course and disease consideration - in a relatively small publication (50 pages). Inevitably, it includes many recommendations without necessarily describing the "how" to implement them. There is perhaps an opportunity for the guidance to link more explicitly to a series of how-to guidelines?
Best wishes, Neil
Neil Pakenham-Walsh, HIFA Coordinator, neil@hifa.org www.hifa.org
