Cambodia

Status: Completed response

In March 2020, the UK Emergency Medical Team sent four health advisors to Cambodia for four weeks to support the government’s preparations to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The team’s main focus was providing expert advice to the Ministry of Health and WHO Cambodia, and adapting clinical guidelines for the Cambodia context.

They also supported healthcare facilities to prepare for COVID-19, and developed and delivered training for hospital staff.

How we’ve helped

The team’s main activities included:

assessing hospitals’ capacity to manage COVID-19 cases

producing case management and infection prevention and control (IPC) guidelines

advising on patient flows for COVID and non-COVID patients

producing a standard operating procedure for primary health care and a hospital referral model for mild, moderate and severe cases

delivering training to hospital health workers, cleaners and ambulance drivers.

training sessions delivered

313

people given training

documents implemented

The response in detail

Supporting hospitals

Soon after their arrival, the UK EMT team made quick assessments of six hospitals in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, and three provincial healthcare facilities.

They then gave guidance on how to restructure hospitals to manage COVID-19 cases, including advice on patient flows, triage and identification and isolation of suspected cases.

Developing guidelines

In line with WHO guidelines, the team developed COVID-19 specific IPC and case management guidelines adapted to the Cambodia context. They also created training tools and materials for health care workers.

Delivering essential training

By the end of the deployment, the team had trained 313 hospital and healthcare staff – including 146 nurses, 76 doctors and 65 cleaners – on key topics including: on COVID-19 background, case management, IPC principles, screening and triage, planning of workflow and PPE use.

They also distributed resources electronically, including training presentations, guidelines, screening tools and Ministry of Health posters.