CMMB’s COVID-19 Emergency Response
CMMB needs $1.9 million to meet the basic needs of the communities where we work.
Partnering with national ministries of health and the World Health Organization, we are working to equip health facilities with critical supplies, protect vulnerable communities, and improve access to safe water for hand-washing.
GET INVOLVED
Our Approach:
CMMB remains committed to bringing quality healthcare to the most vulnerable. We need you now more than ever with the threat of COVID-19. Our shared work in this critical time will have an impact on the lives of those for generations to come.
CMMB is urgently responding to the needs of our vulnerable communities.
As COVID-19 threatens health worldwide, CMMB is mounting an urgent response to protect the vulnerable populations we serve. The remote areas where CMMB works in Haiti, Kenya, Peru, South Sudan, and Zambia are desperately poor, and every day is a constant struggle to maintain basic health and obtain clean water. CMMB is responding urgently to meet their immediate needs— and the needs of the health facilities that care for them.
Relentless in pursuit of our mission to provide quality healthcare, CMMB is committed to our vision of a world in which every human life is valued and health and human dignity are shared by all—this is reflected in the urgency of our COVID-19 response. Our 15 to 20-year commitment to our partner communities helps us respond to urgent needs and build resilient systems.
By training our community health workers on COVID-19 prevention and response and equipping health facilities to treat advanced cases, we are working to minimize the impact of COVID-19 on those already made vulnerable by malnutrition; by malaria, HIV, and other communicable diseases. We are working to give healthcare workers a fighting chance to protect their communities.
Our priorities in the face of this global pandemic underscore the importance of our longstanding efforts to provide quality health services, medications, and safe water for vulnerable communities. Our robust Medical Donations Program is ramping up efforts to support these efforts by providing critical supplies and medications. We are urgently seeking your partnership to accelerate these lifesaving efforts, as they are more needed than ever with the threat of COVID-19. Our shared work during this six-month emergency response phase help us maintain our long-term impact on improving the health for those in need.
We are committed to doing all we can on the ground. Each of our country offices has implemented protocols to ensure the safety of our staff and beneficiaries while staying fully operational throughout the pandemic, providing care and services our beneficiaries rely on.
COMMUNITY PREVENTION
We are training our community health workers to build resilience and help stop the spread of COVID-19 in our remote communities.
CHWs (Community Health Workers) provide critical front-line care to the remote communities we serve. To educate the public on COVID-19 prevention and treatment, CMMB’s technical team is rapidly implementing new COVID-19 training for CHWs and HCWs (Healthcare workers). These trainings will ensure that all have a firm understanding of COVID-19 signs and symptoms as well as best practices and protocols for prevention, control, and mitigation, including effective behavior change communication on handwashing and social distancing. Our headquarters staff is actively staying abreast of COVID-19 developments, ensuring a nimble, rapid response and assured implementation of best practices, updating our field staff in real time. As always, our teams work closely with their respective national ministries of health, integrating their programmatic and reporting priorities.
CHWs will be prepared to respond appropriately. They will be equipped with protective equipment and other essential supplies, purchased in-country and supported by our in-house Medical Donations Program. CMMB is working hard to ensure an uninterrupted supply of these essentials that the government may not be able to provide. Additionally, CHWs support the preparation of community health systems for the eventual introduction of COVID-19 vaccines.
CMMB’s critical interventions to slow the spread of COVID-19, will support CHWs to provide critical information to their communities to raise awareness, build resilience, and provide direct services, particularly for high-risk groups—the elderly and those with comorbidities such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, and cancer. Our CHWs are critical for identifying mild to moderate cases and supporting home isolation, transmission prevention, and close daily monitoring of symptoms. Your support will help fund:
- Equipping CHWs with critical supplies and equipment, ensuring they can provide critical support without putting our communities and themselves at risk.
- Community outreach on COVID-19 signs, symptoms, and prevention.
- Infection prevention and control measures in communities, such as supplies for proper hygiene preventing transmission, meeting the basic needs of those isolating at home, and contact tracing.
- Soap distribution and other sanitation materials to these communities that simply do not have them.
- Emergency transport for the most vulnerable who do not have the resources to bring serious cases of COVID-19 to health facilities for treatment.
- Isolation facilities within communities to help mitigate transmission of COVID-19
Our community health workers reach even the most remote communities without access to health information.
LIFESAVING WATER AND SANITATION
Now more than ever, the communities we serve need access to safe water and sanitation—prevention starts here.
Safe water for communities: Our CHWs are on a mission to ensure every community understands the importance of handwashing in these critical times—they are conducting hygiene education, installing handwashing stations, and distributing soap and hygiene supplies.
Your support will help us improve access to safe water by funding community boreholes with solar-powered pumps and rainwater catchment systems to improve access to clean water, as well as latrine building and hygiene training to ensure proper sanitation.
With your partnership, we can accelerate our WASH programs to meet these critical needs in each of our populations. With clear and precise knowledge of each community’s water source, sanitation facilities, and handwashing habits, CMMB can improve the health of the most vulnerable through simple interventions.
Water for health facilities: Worldwide, healthcare workers are doing all they can to treat those affected by COVID-19. Water access is critical to these efforts, but the remote, low-resource health facilities where we work have insufficient clean water and poor sanitation, forcing staff to rely on unsafe and insufficient water sources—threatening the most vulnerable.
CMMB is partnering with national and local leaders to rapidly install basic handwashing stations at key locations in healthcare facilities to help stave off COVID-19. This short-term solution will help while we continue our work to install boreholes, water storage tanks, and piped water at all health facilities to protect staff and patients.
Providing access to water for handwashing will slow the spread of COVID-19 and save lives—and these investments will have a lifesaving impact long after the pandemic has ended.
EQUIPPING HEALTH FACILITIES TO TREAT COVID-19
CMMB supports health facilities in low resource settings in desperate need of lifesaving supplies and equipment.
CMMB is rapidly responding to the immediate needs of healthcare workers as they prepare to provide critical care for COVID-19 patients in Kenya, Zambia, South Sudan, Peru, and Haiti. In these low-resource settings, critical, lifesaving supplies and equipment are lacking.
Through our in-country partners and our robust Medical Donations Program, CMMB is quickly working to stock health facilities with personal protection items and lifesaving supplies and equipment essential to treat patients with serious cases of COVID-19.
Your support will help fund the following critical supplies:
- Personal protective equipment, including face masks, gloves, gowns, face shields, and goggles
- Ventilators and other respiratory support supplies and equipment, including oxygen.
- Generators to support critical equipment
- Antiviral, analgesics, and antibiotic medications
- Tents to create isolation wards
- 70% alcohol for hand sanitizer
- Hospital beds and linens
- IV materials and fluids
Health facility clinical staff will receive training on providing treatment for COVID-19, as well as training on the equipment to ensure we are supporting the best quality care possible. Under the guidance of CMMB’s clinical advisor, Claudia Llantén, MD, CMMB’s training is based on the best information emerging from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The training also incorporates resources for psychological support for healthcare staff.
In addition to clinical trainings, CMMB’s strong cadre of CHWs will provide backup support for health facilities’ workforce by supporting patient triage and care and performing safe collection of testing samples under nurse supervision. CHWs will help facilitate rapid transport of COVID-19 tests to laboratories and will organize and manage community isolation wards as necessary.
CMMB is committed to providing quality healthcare to last-mile communities and building their resilience, especially in these uncertain times. We seek your support to help us prevent devastation by COVID-19 in these desperately vulnerable populations.
