Data is Key to Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic
In December 2019, the first case of a new infection, COVID-19, was reported in China and three months later, COVID-19 has become a global pandemic, present in every continent. Current efforts to address the pandemic focus on slowing the transmission of the virus through social distancing. To respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an urgent need to provide timely, high quality information on levels of knowledge and readiness to limit the spread of COVID-19, the barriers to social distancing as well as to evaluate the implications of social distancing for women’s health and their economic prospects.
No one knows yet the full impact that Covid-19 will have, but one thing is clear – it has impacted women’s access to contraceptive and sexual and reproductive health services all over the globe. How governments and other health stakeholders respond will be driven by reliable, high-quality data. PMA is working with the Ministries of Health in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Burkina Faso and Nigeria to collect Covid-19 specific data that informs effective outbreak and policies.
PMA will be measuring everything from awareness of the virus to its economic impact and its impact on accessing health services and family planning.
PMA has been collecting data since 2013 and will draw from our experience of the PMA Agile study and a comparison of remote data collection modes conducted in Burkina Faso.
Preliminary results are expected by July, 2020. Read more about the survey here.