‘Rural Community Support Team (CST) Interventions to Combat Covid-19 Pandemic’ launched

The "Rural Community Support Team (CST) Interventions to Combat Covid-19 Pandemic" has been officially launched in Faridpur on Thursday.

The event was held in conference room of Faridpur Medical College, said a press release.

It was organized by the Health and Family Planning departments of Faridpur district with the support of MaMoni Maternal and Newborn Care Strengthening Project: Emergency Response to Covid-19 Pandemic, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), according to the press release.

The Chief Guest of the event was Dr Quazi Hefayet Hossain, line director, Community Based Health Care (CBHC), Directorate General of Health Services. Dr Md Siddiqur Rahman, Civil Surgeon, Faridpur chaired the event.

There is only one RT-PCR Lab available in Faridpur Medical College Hospital. To address this, the initiative launched its intervention package in Faridpur district to be piloted and then scale-up in five more districts.

The districts for scale-up will be selected based on the available resources following certain criteria like higher case load, less RT-PCR testing facility or availability of government's antigen test, the press release added.

'USAID's MaMoni Maternal and Newborn Care Strengthening Project: Emergency Response to Covid-19 Pandemic', implemented by Save the Children in consultation with key stakeholders, has designed a community-based intervention, titled "Rural Community Support Team (CST) Interventions to Combat Covid-19 Pandemic".

This model for rural and municipal community aims to reduce the burden of Covid-19 pandemic and increase resilience of the local health system to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 in Bangladesh.

Dr Shamim Jahan, director, Health, Nutrition and HIV/AIDS, Save the Children in his speech said, "With the financial support of USAID, Save the Children has been supporting the government in different health related initiatives, emergency response to Covid-19 pandemic is also one of those activities and with this initiative, we are now aiming to reach out to rural communities."

Dr Riad Mahmud, health specialist, OPHNE, USAID in his speech thanked all the stakeholders engaged in this process.

He also suggested "to reach out to other formal and informal community-level hubs/groups and bodies that are already working in raising awareness and providing capacity building trainings to tackle Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr Quazi Hefayet Hossain, line director, Community Based Health Care (CBHC), DGHS reassured to continue his ongoing support from CBHC in curbing the spread of the virus and expressed his gratitude to the stakeholders involved in the implementation of rural CST model.

Md Siddiqur Rahman, requested everyone to be vigilant saying - "Even though we are seeing a decline in the number of affected cases in Covid-19, there is no way to undermine its adversity or any chance of it resurfacing anytime soon."

Special guests included Dr Sanowar Hossain Khan, assistant director, Clinical Contraception, Faridpur; Prof Dr ASM Jahangir Chowdhury Tito, president-BMA, Faridpur; Dr Rafiqul Hayder, deputy divisional director, Dhaka Division and many others from their respective organisations, the press release further said.