The Status of Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response in the War-Ridden Tigrai, Ethiopia: A descriptive study benchmarking the Competency Framework

Abstract

<title>Abstract</title> <bold>Background:</bold> Public health emergency preparedness and readiness stand for quickly obtaining and effectively using relevant information and resources to improve the efficiency of emergency response to minimize harm and negative impacts. Ethiopia has been used to pursue health emergency procedures for decades; however, there is a paucity of scientific evidence. This study aimed to assess public health emergency preparedness and response benchmarking in the competency framework within the local context during the postwar period in Tigrai, Ethiopia. <bold>Methods: </bold>A quantitative cross-sectional study was carried out using semi-structured piloted interviewer-administered tools extracted from the core domains of the competency framework to collect the necessary data. The study included 110 randomly selected health institutions (primary hospitals, N=9; health centers, N=23; health posts, N=54; and district health offices, N=24. An Open Data Kit was used to collect the data, which were then exported to SPSS version 27 for data analysis. Finally, the overall status of preparedness and readiness was classified as low if the percentage score was 33%-66.6% and high if it was 66.7%-100%. The data are presented in text narratives, graphs and tables. <bold>Results</bold>: More than half (53.1%) of the district health offices, 54.6% of the primary hospitals, and 52.2% of the health centers in the study area have no specific health emergency plans. Similarly, more than half (53.1%) of the districts, 52.2% of the health centers and 66.6% of the primary hospitals did not report outbreak-prone diseases. More than fifty-six percent of the health centers, 59.4% of the districts and almost two-thirds (66.6%) of the primary hospitals reported that they failed to investigate and treat the outbreaks observed in the study area. <bold>Conclusions</bold>: The current findings revealed that primary health care units, along with district health offices, were challenged in maintaining basic health emergency preparedness and readiness. Disease surveillance, readiness and response with a collaborative and coordinated action of the region and stakeholders was unacceptably low. Thus, strengthening supervision, proper health emergency planning, digitalizing swift reporting activities and establishing functional regional links through intensified training of health professionals at all levels of health services are recommended.