Thanks to Batu Bertok for this photo in Varanasi.
COVID-19 is spreading rapidly across India. As the world's second most populous country with a population of nearly 1·4 billion, India risks having the largest share of COVID-19 infections and deaths worldwide if outbreaks are not contained. As well as its large population, other challenges like densely populated urban areas, non-universal access to water and soap, high proportion of co-morbidities, widespread poverty and a large migrant population, are exacerbating infection control efforts.
India’s health care system was under pressure before the pandemic began; COVID-19 is now pushing the system to its limits. The pandemic adds an additional disease burden on top of a myriad of others pressing issues: heart and pulmonary diseases; malnutrition related illnesses; TB; diabetes; kidney diseases; and asthma.
Pepal’s key NGO partners in India, PATH and JHPIEGO, are on the frontlines of the health response there, particularly supporting women’s health and disease prevention and treatment. PATH and JHPIEGO are key technical partners for the Pepal, Progressive Foundation and Roche ‘NJIA’ programme which focuses on leadership development in the context of reducing the cervical cancer burden in India (and Tanzania).
As Pepal cannot deliver in person programmes this year, we asked our partners how else we could support them. Together we developed two leadership focused initiatives to strengthen the health system response and support our NGO partners amidst COVID-19.
PATH
We work closely with PATH India’s maternal and family health team as part of the NJIA programme. Since the pandemic began, the team have noticed an alarming increase in the number of low-birth weight babies, infant and child malnutrition and drop in postnatal care visits by new mothers. PATH India provides essential health care interventions for mothers and babies to improve health outcomes, including supporting milk banks for babies who cannot access their mother’s milk, and lactation management centres for new mothers.
Ruchika Sachdeva, the Nutrition Team Leader at PATH, identified two drivers for these emerging issues: lack of knowledge of COVID-19 safe breastfeeding guidelines, and a leadership gap amongst frontline providers to advocate for increased access of services by new mothers.
Together, we developed two videos: one focused on safe breastfeeding guidelines and leadership and the other on effective leadership styles for the COVID-19 crisis. Produced in both English and Hindi, the videos have been shared by state government bodies and donor networks like UNICEF to thousands of frontline healthcare providers in India.
Leadership and Breastfeeding video developed with Progressive Foundation and PATH.
Leadership and COVID-19 video developed with Progressive Foundation and PATH.
JHPIEGO
JHPIEGO has been our partner since the launch of the NJIA programme in India in 2019. JHPIEGO India supports the provision of primary health care in India, especially in maternal, child and adolescent health. Our partners at JHPIEGO, including Dr. Vineet Srivastava, Program Director, share our belief that leadership development and management soft skills are incredibly important during times of crisis and increased workload.
JHPIEGO senior management nominated 28 leaders in the organisation to join a two part training series on ‘Personal and Team Resilience’. As part of this training, participants learned about resilient mindset shifts and practical team management skills to improve teamwork and collaboration during times of stress and crisis.
100% of participants who took part would recommend the training to a colleague, and 100% also felt more resilient as a result of taking part. Many have put their new management tools into practice with their teams as they juggle increasingly pressurised deadlines and workloads. We are currently exploring ways to scale up leadership training for more staff in the organisation.
Through these two initiatives, we are supporting the health heroes on the frontline of this devastating pandemic in India. Leadership and health systems strengthening are critical to resilient health systems, and we are grateful that we can continue to create meaningful collaborations with our partners during this time.