Preparedness for Pediatric COVID-19 Using Systems Approach: Experience of a Health Care Facility from India

Abstract

A pandemic leads to disruption and stretching of an existing health care system and its resources. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) data show distinct and severe manifestations in children necessitating critical care. Children need prioritization as they are susceptible to COVID-19 as part of the family cluster, varied presentations, and mortality. The purpose of this report is to discuss the optimization of the health care system for pediatric care. The key initiatives were to identify our objectives, bring out changes to the organizational processes, and integrate the same into the existing system. A systems approach to health care delivery by optimizing infrastructure, human resources, materials, funding, leadership, and governance was undertaken. This resulted in creation of distinct COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 service areas, management protocols, and trained health care workers. Partnership was forged with the public health system. This preparedness and continued responses to the demands of the health care system helped us manage children ranging from neonates to adolescents efficiently. Though the health care system is mostly open, acting upon the modifiable factors gave better preparedness in a short time. Publication Date: 06 July 2021 (online) © 2021. Nitte (Deemed to be University). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Thieme Medical and Scientific Publishers Pvt. Ltd. A-12, 2nd Floor, Sector 2, Noida-201301 UP, India