Effects of COVID in LR

Background: As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments were forced to quickly undertake a variety of harsh public health measures without recourse to alleviate the impact on ordinary healthcare services. At 6 months into the Liberian outbreak, this report revealed regular health care interruption and restoration procedures.

Situation: Liberia has over 800 health institutions spread throughout 15 counties, with one-third in Montserrado County. A merge study was performed using a structured roadmap for group discussions between many key health workers at 42 backup and most patronized health care facilities in 14 counties and 7 Montserrado districts, using a moderate method – quantitative and qualitative research with concurrent triangulation. Additionally, regular health data was retrieved from the source papers to the electronic checklist between January and June 2019 and 2020. We drew a line graph of the relative percentage change after doing a descriptive analysis of quantitative data. Themes and subthemes in line with the study goals and excerpts given in the results were identified using ATLAS ti for content analysis of transcribed audio recording notes.

Liberia declared COVID-19 an epidemic on March 16, 2020. Normal health services were disrupted in 80 percent of the 41 health institutions assessed. The number of scheduled routine immunization outreaches decreased by 47% between January and June 2020. According to the data, outpatient attendance declined by 32% in May, hospital admissions fell by 30% in April, malaria diagnosis and treatment fell by 40% in April, and routine prenatal obstetric care fell by 28% in April. Fear of contracting COVID-19, redeployment of healthcare workers to COVID-19 response, movement restrictions due to lockdown, insufficient or lack of PPE for healthcare workers, drug and vaccine resources for clients, and selective closure of routine medical care were all cited as reasons for disruptions. Some of the health institution recovery initiatives included extensive community health education and rigorous adherence to COVID-19 nonpharmacological approaches.

Conclusion: The COVID-19 epidemic in Liberia disrupted ordinary healthcare services, and initiatives were established to refocus the restoration of such services. Countries should maintain normal health services and plan for them during epidemics or global health emergencies.