CARE COVID-19 Response through Mobile Health Team in Urban and Rural Areas of Balkh and Kabul provinces. CARE Afghanistan proposes to meet the emergency needs of 9,000 vulnerable households (63,000 individuals) potentially to be affected by COVID-19 in at-risk communities of IDPs, informal settlement, and marginalized communities in 9 districts across the provinces of Kabul and Balkh. The project will support the target communities by providing access to information  IEC materials, awareness-raising session, and strong community engagement on COVID-19. Services will further include community- based surveillance of COVID-19 cases, case identification and referral, provision of guidance and dissemination of guidelines on COVID-19 including case definition and case management to BPHS, EPHS and private health facilities and surveillance teams as well as the provision of stockpiles of PPEs and consumables to the mentioned health facilities. Moreover, the project will include a provision of psycho-social counseling and awareness-raising to reduce fear, rumors, and stigma among affected communities.
CARE has had a long presence in the two provinces of Kabul and Balkh and implemented various health and humanitarian projects. This intervention is building on the experience of previous health-related projects including recent GAC’s funded Emergency Response project, where MHTs have been used to provide support to vulnerable families, women and children in particular, with increased health services, as well as OFDA’s funded Drought Response project where community-based surveillance of communicable diseases and malnutrition was established and conducted in Balkh and Samangan Provinces. CARE has implemented mobile health team projects for the provision of life-saving SRH and PHC in the two provinces and has strong linkages with the communities, as most of the CARE interventions are community-based. 
The project will be implemented through Mobile Health Teams (MHT) in the targeted districts, the MHTs staffing, scope of work and medical commodities will be aligned with the MHT package of health services outlined by the MoPH for emergency response. Also, the MHTs’ achievements will be reported to the Health Information Management System (HIMS) of MoPH.  Each MHT will comprise a team of professionals, including a medical doctor to conduct community-based screening and case identification of COVID-19 cases along with the provision of life-saving primary health care services and to provide technical support to the local health facilities on COVID-19 guidelines, a midwife to provide maternal and neonatal health services, a psychosocial counselor, who will provide psychosocial counseling services for the beneficiaries affected by fear and stigma due to COVID-19 as well as due to GBV, a vaccinator to provide immunization services, and two community mobilizers (one male and one female), who will be conducted community awareness-raising, training of the community members on COVID-19 and to support psychosocial counselor on psychosocial awareness-raising sessions. CARE will deploy our existing technical staff on the mobile teams, who have solid local experience. This project will provide opportunities for COVID-19 testing, referral, treatment, and counseling as well as technical support from the MHT teams. CARE will be implementing this project in close coordination and agreement with the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) of Afghanistan. Several meetings have been held with Provincial Public Health Directorates of both Kabul and Balkh provinces and both are in agreement with and supportive of the proposed project. CARE is also encouraging to seek further opportunities to expand the services to wider areas.