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Evaluating COVID-19 decision-making in a humanitarian setting: The case study of Somalia

The global COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented in its scope and impact. While a great deal of research has been directed towards the response in high-income countries, relatively little is known about the way in which decision-makers in low-income and crisis-affected countries have contended with the...

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Autores principales: Warsame, Abdihamid, Fuje, Mohamed, Checchi, Francesco, Blanchet, Karl, Palmer, Jennifer
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10021687/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36962363
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000192
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author Warsame, Abdihamid
Fuje, Mohamed
Checchi, Francesco
Blanchet, Karl
Palmer, Jennifer
author_facet Warsame, Abdihamid
Fuje, Mohamed
Checchi, Francesco
Blanchet, Karl
Palmer, Jennifer
author_sort Warsame, Abdihamid
collection PubMed
description The global COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented in its scope and impact. While a great deal of research has been directed towards the response in high-income countries, relatively little is known about the way in which decision-makers in low-income and crisis-affected countries have contended with the epidemic. Through use of an a priori decision framework, we aimed to evaluate the process of policy and operational decision-making in relation to the COVID-19 response in Somalia, a chronically fragile country, focusing particularly on the use of information and the role of transparency. We undertook a desk review, observed a number of key decision-making fora and conducted a series of key informant and focus group discussions with a range of decision-makers including state authority, civil society, humanitarian and development actors. We found that nearly all actors struggled to make sense of the scale of the epidemic and form an appropriate response. Decisions made during the early months had a large impact on the course of the epidemic response. Decision-makers relied heavily on international norms and were constrained by a number of factors within the political environment including resource limitations, political contestation and low population adherence to response measures. Important aspects of the response suffered from a transparency deficit and would have benefitted from more inclusive decision-making. Development of decision support tools appropriate for crisis-affected settings that explicitly deal with individual and environmental decision factors could lead to more effective and timely epidemic response.
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spelling pubmed-100216872023-03-17 Evaluating COVID-19 decision-making in a humanitarian setting: The case study of Somalia Warsame, Abdihamid Fuje, Mohamed Checchi, Francesco Blanchet, Karl Palmer, Jennifer PLOS Glob Public Health Research Article The global COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented in its scope and impact. While a great deal of research has been directed towards the response in high-income countries, relatively little is known about the way in which decision-makers in low-income and crisis-affected countries have contended with the epidemic. Through use of an a priori decision framework, we aimed to evaluate the process of policy and operational decision-making in relation to the COVID-19 response in Somalia, a chronically fragile country, focusing particularly on the use of information and the role of transparency. We undertook a desk review, observed a number of key decision-making fora and conducted a series of key informant and focus group discussions with a range of decision-makers including state authority, civil society, humanitarian and development actors. We found that nearly all actors struggled to make sense of the scale of the epidemic and form an appropriate response. Decisions made during the early months had a large impact on the course of the epidemic response. Decision-makers relied heavily on international norms and were constrained by a number of factors within the political environment including resource limitations, political contestation and low population adherence to response measures. Important aspects of the response suffered from a transparency deficit and would have benefitted from more inclusive decision-making. Development of decision support tools appropriate for crisis-affected settings that explicitly deal with individual and environmental decision factors could lead to more effective and timely epidemic response. Public Library of Science 2022-03-16 /pmc/articles/PMC10021687/ /pubmed/36962363 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000192 Text en © 2022 Warsame et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Warsame, Abdihamid
Fuje, Mohamed
Checchi, Francesco
Blanchet, Karl
Palmer, Jennifer
Evaluating COVID-19 decision-making in a humanitarian setting: The case study of Somalia
title Evaluating COVID-19 decision-making in a humanitarian setting: The case study of Somalia
title_full Evaluating COVID-19 decision-making in a humanitarian setting: The case study of Somalia
title_fullStr Evaluating COVID-19 decision-making in a humanitarian setting: The case study of Somalia
title_full_unstemmed Evaluating COVID-19 decision-making in a humanitarian setting: The case study of Somalia
title_short Evaluating COVID-19 decision-making in a humanitarian setting: The case study of Somalia
title_sort evaluating covid-19 decision-making in a humanitarian setting: the case study of somalia
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10021687/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36962363
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000192
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