WHO beat the odds to deliver medical expertise to Azerbaijan in the middle of an international lockdown to help deal with the spread of COVID-19. It took just 1 month for 19 Azerbaijani doctors from Turkey to arrive on the ground in their home country, having already completed a 7-day training course in Izmir.
A combination of WHO facilitation efforts and collaboration between Azerbaijan and Turkey enabled the doctors to obtain special permissions to travel for the Rapid Scale-up of Essential Capacities for COVID-19 (REACT-C19) project – an initiative to share expertise with fellow workers, use innovative solutions and digital platforms, and reshape the hospital response to COVID-19.
International collaboration, solidarity and innovation
From the project’s conception to its realization, it placed an emphasis on the need to respond quickly. WHO raised funds and organized logistics at a time when travel between countries was severely limited. The highly qualified medical personnel were identified and trained within weeks, and arrived in Baku on a special plane sent by the Azerbaijani Government.
The group included specialists in infectious diseases, internal medicine, pulmonology, anaesthesiology and reanimation. They visited 12 COVID-19 response hospitals throughout the country to help them scale up essential hospital capacity and get ready for the virus.
The doctors’ familiarity with the local language and culture helped the team to bond and made communication inside the hospitals straightforward. Working in teams of 4, the doctors spent a 2-week period, referred to as a sprint, in each hospital before moving on as part of the REACT-C19 project.
“REACT-C19 has proven to be a great example of international collaboration, solidarity and innovation in the face of this global public health emergency. As a result of the work of our teams in supporting the hospital management, triage systems were set up, infection-control committees were established and many health-care workers were trained in essential skills,” says Dr Hande Harmanci, WHO Representative in Azerbaijan.
She adds, “As WHO, we will continue to support the Government of Azerbaijan in their fight with COVID-19.”
A transformational experience for staff
The doctors used the WHO Rapid Hospital Readiness Checklist to assess and support their peers. The tool allows hospitals to see how well they are performing against a set of 11 components, such as establishing an incident management system, setting up an operational body for COVID-19, and strengthening infection prevention and control, including by setting up triage systems.
Dr Farrukh Sadirov, a specialist in infectious diseases at Central Oilmen’s Hospital, reports that the Hospital benefited greatly from the visit. “During the 2 weeks when the REACT-C19 doctors were with us, big changes happened in our hospital. We established an Infection Control Committee and scaled up our preparedness to receive a large number of patients.”
In one example, REACT-C19 Field Coordinator Dr Hamza Zeytinoglu explains how the WHO Rapid Hospital Readiness Checklist was used to pinpoint the fact that the zoning system in a newly built regional hospital needed improving. He describes the process that led to this realization as a transformational experience for many of the staff.
“We were out there in personal protective equipment going through the hospital, checking where each lift was situated and which staircases should be shut, deciding which patients are going to stay in which rooms and how the staff are going to move around the hospital. Most of the staff had never had that kind of experience before. Now they can scan a hospital inside and out in 24 hours to assess its readiness. Each and every one of them became really connected,” Dr Zeytinoglu explains.
The Azerbaijani doctors also used the opportunity of working with WHO to learn how best to engage with the health authorities. They were warmly welcomed by hospital staff.
Legacy for the future
During the final phase of the project, the team set up the REACT-C19 website as a repository for academic material and to provide interactive training for health-care workers. The aim is to create a platform for continuous education that will last for at least 2 years.
“By sharing the problems and experiences we encountered in the hospital on the REACT-C19 online platform, we found solutions to those problems with all our doctors and mentors in Turkey, and by sharing our experiences with each other, we came up with new ideas and made our work much easier,” emphasizes Dr Fidan Sultanova, one of the REACT-C19 consultant doctors.
Psychosocial support was offered to the visiting physicians, who Dr Zeytinoglu said fostered an uplifting sense of solidarity and purpose. “The whole idea is that we came here with 19 people and hopefully we will leave behind many more with an improved skill set and better understanding of the way forward. That the people we train can become the trainers of the future is our legacy.”
The REACT-C19 project was implemented by WHO in partnership with the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, the Ministry of Health of Azerbaijan, the State Agency on Mandatory Health Insurance and TABIB. Funding came from WHO COVID-19 funds, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the British Embassy in Baku.
*The content of this article was amended on 11 August 2020 because an earlier version incorrectly referred to the number of hospitals visited as 16 when it should have been 12.