Efficacy of healthcare policies implemented in primary healthcare in the countries of South-Eastern Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic

Marija Zafirovska, Aleksandar Zafirovski, Ljubin Šukriev, Danica Rotar-Pavlič

Keywords: primary healthcare, covid-19, policies, measures, prevention

Background:

Primary healthcare practitioners, as the first-contact of healthcare, play a vital role in the pandemic of covid-19. Many countries implemented different policies and preventive measures in order to tackle the rapidly increasing numbers of infected citizens. These policies affected the organization and protocols in all three levels of healthcare and demanded fast adaptation both of its healthcare providers and users.

Research questions:

The aim of this research is to evaluate the effect of the different health policies, protocols and resources implemented in primary healthcare on the outcome of the covid-19 pandemic in different countries in South-Eastern Europe.

Method:

For this longitudinal cohort study, we are going to use an anonymous online survey that will consist of a list of questions - binominal, multiple choice, scale questions and comments. The collected data will be quantitative and qualitative in nature.
The survey will be distributed by the AGPFM-SEE electronically to the member countries and with the help of other local medical organizations to the primary healthcare practitioners. The survey will take about 10-15 min to fill.
We are expecting to cover a minimum of 200-300 primary healthcare practitioners per country, but hoping to collect more.

Results:

We expect to find that the increasing number of infected citizens in certain Southeastern European countries is due to the citizens’ violation and neglect of the preventative measures, untimely creation of policies by the government and ineffective organization of doctors in the three levels of healthcare. Different strategies implemented in primary healthcare would greatly impact the infection rate and outcome. We expect to find that in countries where the primary practitioners were actively more included in prevention and detection of covid-19, the numbers of infected citizens are smaller.

Conclusions:

We predict that public health awareness is a crucial factor in the spreading of covid-19 in different Southeastern European countries.

Points for discussion:

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