Maintaining Essential Health Services: Operational Guidance for the COVID-19 Context


June 29, 2020

The World Health Organization has updated their interim operational guide for maintaining essential health services during an outbreak, to support countries preparedness and response during the COVID-19 pandemic. It supplements existing and future WHO guidance on the wider implications of COVID-19 for health systems, and cross-government strategies for responding to the COVID-19 outbreak. The updated guidance has two parts: operational strategies for maintaining essential health services; and life course and disease considerations. As an annex, the guidance includes sample indicators for monitoring essential health services.