WHO and partners conclude REACT-C19 project in Azerbaijan

The project covered 12 hospitals in 5 regions - Baku, Ganja, Shamkir, Agdash, and Goranboy in 4 sprints of approximately two weeks. Within the project, 1185 attendances of health workers in trainings were achieved in total in a variety of subjects including management of severe COVID patients, interpretation of COVID laboratory results, etc. The project facilitated the establishment of  Infection Control Committees in 5 hospitals, setting an example for others to follow. 

The Hospital Readiness Checklist of WHO implemented from the onset as a component of monitoring and evaluation of hospitals resulted in significant improvements especially in strengthening infection prevention and control measures, management of patients, surveillance and incident management across a majority of hospitals in the project. The bottlenecks and barriers to improvement were reported systematically to authorities together with recommendations.  

In addition to supporting readiness in 12 hospitals, a Training Center was established within the New Clinic. Between 12-30 June, 119 healthcare workers participated in the trainings on how to protect themselves from COVID-19. 

REACT-C19 project resulted in the strengthening of collaboration among WHO, Heydar Aliyev Foundation, State Agency on Mandatory Health Insurance, TABIB and the Ministry of Health as well as other institutions such as Azerbaijan Medical University, Public Health, and Reform Center and Azerbaijan State Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education with special emphasis on building human resources capacity through targeted trainings. 

As the REACT-C19 project closes, many of the project consultant doctors decided to stay in Azerbaijan for some more time to continue to support the country. 

About REACT-C19 project 

In partnership with the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, Ministry of Health, State Agency on Mandatory Health Insurance, TABIB, USAID, the British Embassy in Baku and the Republic of Korea, WHO implemented the Rapid Scale-up of Essential Capacities for COVID-19 (REACT-C19) project for strengthening essential response capacities Azerbaijan. The 19 doctors in the specialty areas of infectious diseases, pulmonology, anesthesiology and reanimation, internal medicine, currently working in Turkey, form the backbone of the REACT-C19 teams.