WHO IAR report by IIMA, IIPH on Guj COVID-19 response released

The report of the firststate-level COVID-19 Intra Action Review IAR in Indiaconducted in Gujarat by the Indian Institute of Management,Ahmedabad and Indian Institute of Public Health, Gandhinagaras per World Health Organisation WHO guidelines was releasedon Friday.It was released in the presence of WHO Representativein India Dr Roedrico Ofrin and Gujarat chief minister VijayRupani.We have very little information of the 1921 flu, interms of how many peaks it had, what were protocols followed,how did the administration responded.

The report of the firststate-level COVID-19 Intra Action Review (IAR) in Indiaconducted in Gujarat by the Indian Institute of Management,Ahmedabad and Indian Institute of Public Health, Gandhinagaras per World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines was releasedon Friday.

It was released in the presence of WHO Representativein India Dr Roedrico Ofrin and Gujarat chief minister VijayRupani.

''We have very little information of the 1921 flu, interms of how many peaks it had, what were protocols followed,how did the administration responded. This exercise is aboutfuture proofing,'' Dr Ofrin said after releasing the report.

''The documentation will make us better prepared todeal with future pandemics and the body of knowledge will behelpful to other parts of the world also. The response wasfrom different departments and it is important to have aproper record of our responses from independent sources,'' hesaid.

Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani said the pandemicwas a new situation for everyone and neither the medicalfraternity or administration knew how to deal with it.

''The records of the past pandemic of 1920s are hardlyavailable. Now after one year, this AIR is the record of howthe administration dealt with the COVID-19 crisis, what wasthe response to control the pandemic,'' the CM said.

Rupani said, in case there is something similar in thefuture, administrators will have recorded documentations toguide them on the response.

Before this, the WHO recommended IAR was conducted inThailand and Indonesia, making India the third country inSouth-East Asia to carry out the review, officials said,adding that Gujarat was the first state in the country toundertake this activity.

The IAR was conducted by third party institutes likeIIM-Ahmedabad and IIPH-Gandhinagar by interviewing COVID-19responders, and key reflections from the pandemic managementin the state were documented under 10 different responsepillars as identified by WHO.

The response review report discusses key strategies,challenges faced and ways adopted to deal with them, as wellas some recommendations for strengthening the health system tomanage COVID-19 and other eventualities.

IIM-A professor Ranjan Ghosh and IIPH director DrDileep Mavalankar have worked hard to prepare the IAR, saidofficials.

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