Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, MCD Global Health has pivoted, adapted, and responded through many of its ongoing projects and programs both in the U.S. and around the world.
Learn how we responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, both in the U.S. and Africa:
Our international teams assist country governments and the populations they serve in planning and strengthening their pandemic preparedness and response efforts in line with the World Health Organization (WHO)’s guidelines.
Our teams are invested in important malaria work in Equatorial Guinea, specifically the Bioko Island Malaria Elimination Project (BIMEP). With established trust and a long-term presence there, MCD was able to easily support the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in developing and implementing its COVID-19 Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan and a COVID-19 Vaccine Deployment Plan.
Other responses to the pandemic included:
Carolina Gutiérrez was a nurse at the primary hospital in Malabo, the capital city on Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea, soon found herself on the frontline when cases of COVID-19 rapidly increased on the island in 2020.
“The precarious situation of the Malabo hospital became increasingly apparent due to the insufficiency of medical staff and resources, which made me wonder what would become of this beautiful island once the pandemic hit in full force,” she said, reminiscing.
In July 2020, Carolina was introduced to MCD Global Health, which had established its presence on Bioko Island since 2004 with the goal of eventually eliminating malaria from the island.
“As soon as I began working [at MCD], I noticed a difference between [MCD] and my previous employer. That shift restored the joy and enthusiasm I had when I first arrived to the island,” she said.
Alongside our malaria work in Equatorial Guinea, we also had existing teams in Madagascar and Benin who were working sanitation and hygiene-specific work. Part of this work included teaching good hygiene practices, specifically hand-washing with soap, so when the pandemic reached these countries, our teams were fully prepared to use what they were teaching to confront COVID-19 in communities.
Along with supporting the development of country plans and strategies to fight COVID-19 and implementing those activities, MCD also:
In 16 PMI Impact Malaria African countries, our teams supported country coordination and planning for COVID-19 through participation in meetings of National COVID-19 Committees. We also:
Throughout the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, our domestic teams leveraged their experiences and partnerships with the public and private sectors to forge effective pandemic preparedness and response strategies against COVID-19 at the state and local levels in Maine and at the regional level in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont as well as New Jersey and New York.
Our U.S. Division teams provided the staffing services to support the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Maine CDC) in its comprehensive COVID-19 response efforts in the realms of epidemiological surveillance, informatics, case investigation, contract tracing, grants, and finance.
Along with these staffing services, our other embedded staff within the Maine CDC provided additional COVID-19 response services by staffing the state COVID hotline, serving as case investigators, and working the Maine Immunization Program’s Community Vaccination Line.
Outside of staffing the public health workforce in order to better respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, our other U.S. programs did the following:
Telehealth quickly became a vital ‘tool in the toolbox’ for ensuring safe, continuous access to care and enabling emergency response throughout the pandemic. With thousands of regional stakeholders reaching out for technical assistance and training for rapid telehealth implementation, our Northeast Telehealth Resource Center (NETRC) team became the ‘go-to’ resource for the explosion of telehealth-related needs across the region.
In April 2020, MCD and the NETRC were awarded additional Coronavirus Telehealth Resource Center grant funding from the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy under the CARES Act. This funding helped meet the massive increase in volume of day-to-day requests for assistance and serve the needs for increased in-depth technical assistance from regional stakeholders assisting rural and underserved populations.
The NETRC experienced a 920% increase in technical assistance requests during the early months of the pandemic in 2020 and sustained significantly higher technical assistance numbers throughout 2020 as compared to previous years.
MCD and the NETRC also:
