CARE Health Response to COVID-19-II CARE Afghanistan proposes to meet the emergency needs of 9300 vulnerable households (65,100 individuals) potentially to be affected by COVID-19 in at-risk communities of IDPs, informal settlement, and marginalized communities in 7 districts across the provinces of Kabul and Balkh. The project will support the target communities through (1) deployment of 7 mobile health teams to provide: Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) service about COVID-19 services including access to Information, Education and Communication (IEC) materials, training of the community influential, awareness-raising session and strong community engagement on COVID-19 community- based surveillance of COVID-19 cases, identification of suspected cases, home-based treatment of the mild cases and referral of the high-risk cases provision of life-saving Primary Health Care (PHC) services with a specific focus on women and children provision of psycho social counseling and awareness-raising to reduce fear, rumors and stigma among affected communities. (2) Provision of technical guidance and dissemination of guidelines on COVID-19 to health facilities including case definition and case management to BPHS, EPHS, and private health facilities and surveillance teams as CARE has 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 the recent AHF (4th Reserve Allocation) funded project in Balkh and Kabul Provinces, the project Vaccinator will provide immunization vaccine to women and under two-year children also vaccinator help on the eradication of polio through the provision of polio vaccine to under five-year children funded Emergency Response project, where MHTs have been used to provide support to vulnerable families, women and children in particular, with increased health services. CARE has implemented mobile health team projects for the provision of life-saving SRH and PHC services 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 7 mobile health teams in the targeted districts, Each mobile team 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 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, 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 psycho-social counselor on 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 has coordinated selection of the new geographic coverage for this intervention with PPHD, BPHS partner to avoid duplication of activities and geographic coverage. Through this project, CARE will established MHTs in PD# 2, 7, 11 of Kabul city and as well as in rural communities in the districts of Shortepa, Nahre-e-Shahi and tow urban districts of Mazar city where no similar interventions are being implemented.
Additionally, a very robust and practical data management, compilation, and reporting system with an effective monitoring mechanism will be implemented at both national and provincial levels.