Ethiopian Healthcare Workers’ Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic

  1. Averi Chakrabarti
  2. Solomon Tessema Memirie
  3. Delayehu Bekele
  4. Mizan Kiros
  5. Christina L. Meyer
  6. Phuong N. Pham
  7. Patrick Vinck
  8. Stéphane Verguet

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Abstract

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused widespread health and socioeconomic disruptions around the world. Understanding the impact that this crisis has had on health workers and the delivery of routine health care services within countries provides evidence on pandemic preparedness and response. Here, we conduct an investigation into these factors for the Ethiopian context.

Methods and findings

We conducted an online cross-sectional survey with Ethiopian health care professionals between August 27 and October 10, 2020 via existing research networks. The variables of interest were confidence in COVID-19 related knowledge, training and experience, the adoption of precautionary health practices, risk perceptions, and respondent concerns. The majority of surveyed health care professionals in Ethiopia reported seeing fewer patients than usual during the COVID-19 crisis, gaps in pandemic training, inadequate access to personal protective equipment (PPE) and barriers to accessing COVID-19 testing. Most health care professionals were also deeply concerned and worried about their own COVID-19 risks and the likelihood that they would transmit the disease to others.

Conclusions

Our study findings point to a possible reduction in routine health care services during the COVID-19 pandemic and gaps in pandemic preparedness in Ethiopia. The ministry of health and other stakeholders should work towards improving access to PPE and testing, and identify approaches to ensure that essential healthcare provision (such as immunizations) is not disrupted during crises akin to the COVID-19 outbreak.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.02.01.22270247: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: Ethical consideration: Ethical clearance was acquired from both the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Institutional Review Board (IRB) (Protocol #IRB20-1109) and the IRB of Saint Paul’s Millennium Medical College, Addis Ababa.
    Consent: Individual consent was sought from potential respondents prior to online survey participation.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Another limitation of the study is the use of the English language for the survey rather than the local dialects. Despite these shortcomings, our study provides a glimpse of Ethiopia’s health system preparedness and the healthcare workers’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the findings highlight specific steps that Ethiopia would need to take to best leverage its health care workers’ abilities to most effectively tackle the COVID-19 (or a future) pandemic in the country. These steps include providing targeted training, ensuring access to PPE for frontline workers, improving access to COVID-19 testing, and equipping health professionals with the coping strategies they need to deal with potential mental health ramifications.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.02.01.22270247 on medRxiv