Assessment of health-related country preparedness and readiness of Nepal for responding to COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Fact sheet A nation-wide study was conducted to assess the preparedness and readiness of the Government of Nepal (GoN) designated Hospital-running-COVID Clinics to respond to COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 95 COVID Clinics via face to face and telephonic interviews with focal persons. Among them, telephonic interviews were carried out in few unreachable COVID Clinics due to national lockdown. A total of 95 COVID Clinics were included in the study, among which two of the hospitals were found not to be running COVID Clinics. Hence, a total of 93 hospitals served as COVID Clinics. The data was collected during the time period of one month (26 April 2020 to 27 May 2020). All the designated COVID Clinics were included in the study and the response rate was 100%. This fact sheet summarizes the main indicators of designated COVID Clinics related to COVID-19 preparedness and readiness. It will support the GoN/ Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) to assess the current status of the Clinics, find the gaps and align the practices and resources for better preparedness and readiness to respond against COVID-19. This study gathered data on general information of the Hospitals-running-COVID Clinics including 11 domains as described below.