Healthcare system and social trust in the fight against Covid-19: the case of France

Essential health services delivery in South Africa during COVID-19: Community and healthcare worker perspectives

Background

Between May 2020 and February 2022, South Africa's health system bore strain as it battled mitigating the coronavirus pandemic. The country's pandemic response was scrutinized. This period also brought into focus pre-existing shortcomings in the healthcare system and its governing bodies. Contextually, there is a paucity in literature on the experiences of healthcare providers and users. This study aimed to contribute information on COVID-19, with the intention of providing guidance on preparing for future infectious disease outbreaks.

Methods

Cross sectional exploratory qualitative methodology was employed using semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with community members (CM) and healthcare workers (HCW) from two South African study sites: (a) rural Bushbuckridge (run by Agincourt Health and Socio-Demographic Surveillance Site) and (b), Regions D and F in Johannesburg Metropole.

Results

After interviewing 42 CMs and 43 HCWs, it emerged that mandated process changes while minimizing COVID-19 exposure, necessitated healthcare personnel focusing on critical care treatment at the expense of less acute ones. COVID-19 isolation protocols, extensive absenteeism and HCWs with advanced skills being perceived as more adept to treat COVID-19 patients contributed to HCWs experiencing higher workloads. Fears regarding contracting and transmitting COVID-19, suffering financial losses, and not being able to provide adequate advice to patients were recurrent themes. Dissemination of relevant information among healthcare facility personnel and communities suffered due to breakdowns in communication.

Conclusion

Concessions and novel strategies to avail medication to patients had to be created. Since providence was lacking, government needs to formulate health intervention strategies that embrace health literacy, alternate methods of chronic medication dispensation, improved communication across health care platforms and the use of telehealth, to circumvent the threats of possible further infectious disease outbreaks.

[Epidemiology of urological emergencies in France]

INTRODUCTION

To report the epidemiology and the care pathway for urological emergencies in France for the official report of the 115th Congres Francais d'Urologie.

METHODS

We made a request to the Institut de Veille Sanitaire and its network Surveillance Sanitaire des Urgences et des Décès (SurSaUD®). Within this system, the OSCOUR® network (Organisation de la surveillance coordonnée des urgences) centralizes in real time the data of emergency visits from more than 720 emergency departments throughout the national territory (>93% of the national territory covered by the OSCOUR® network). For each emergency defined by its CIM-10 code, the following data were collected from 2014 to 2019: age, gender, length of stay and post-emergency status (hospitalization vs. return home).

RESULTS

From 2014 to 2019, urological emergencies represented on average 4.2% of all emergencies, with an average 591,080±66,782 passages/year including 25% that resulted in hospitalization. Infectious disease represented 35% of all urological emergencies. The 3 most common urologic emergencies were: renal colic, acute urine retention and hematuria for men; acute cystitis, pyelonephritis and renal colic for women.

CONCLUSION

In an analysis of the OSCOUR® (Organisation de la surveillance coordonnée des urgences) registry, we determined the epidemiological profiles of the main urological emergencies with contemporary data.