COVID Response Team – CIMSA-Indonesia

Name of the activity: COVID Response Team

Country/NMO: CIMSA-Indonesia

Program: Communicable Diseases

Contact information: contact [email protected] to get in touch with the Activity Coordinator

Type of the activity: Continuous Activity

Category: Campaign

Focus area: Work to increase rate of Vaccination

Sustainable Development Goals addressed: SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities)

General description:

Indonesia has low COVID vaccination coverage, CIMSA, responsively formed the CRT as a strategist and give direct intervention to the community by maximizing CIMSA members as a resource through campaigns and  vaccination program especially for elderly. Knowledge, mobility, and comorbidity are the main factors that make it challenging for the elderly to get vaccination. CRT increase knowledge through campaigns and effective vaccination methods for elderly using the door-to-door method in 18 region

Problem statement:

According Ministry of Health, on 9/21 there were 4,198,678 people who confirmed positive COVID with death rate of 140,954, also regarding the number of vaccinations, Indonesia has target of 208,265,720 people get vaccines, but only 40% received the first dose. For elderly, the target is 21,553,118 people to be vaccinated, but only 28.14% received first dose and only 19.57% received doses completely. This is really detrimental to the elderly because they are a vulnerable group to COVID-19.

Target groups:

• General population
• Medical students
• Vulnerable populations

Beneficiaries:

• General population
• Medical students
• Healthcare Students
• Other Students
• Doctors
• Other health professionals
• Vulnerable populations

Objectives:

1. CRT seeks to increase knowledge through campaigns on COVID-19, Vulnerable People Vaccinations, and vaccination procedures, as well as screening programs, administration, and monitoring of Post-Immunization Adverse Events through social media campaign through Instagram and conducted a sentiment analysis of public perceptions on Twitter social media related to elderly vaccination and child vaccination with data on 500 Twitter opinions within 6 months from October 2021 – march 2022.
2. Forming a Field team for CRT to increase vaccine acceptance for 1,500 elderly people, in 15 cities in Indonesia consisting of medical students and advocating the new effective vaccination method for vulnerable people, door-to-door, to 15 Primary Health Care within 6 months from October 2021 – march 2022.

Indicators of Success:

Social media campaign

1. Successfully gained 29.493 impressions and 23.594 accounts reached on Instagram
2. Conducted a sentiment analysis of public perceptions on Twitter related to elderly vaccination and child vaccination with data on 500 Twitter opinions.

2. Field team

1. Held 1 online webinar and 2 workshops. improved knowledge and skills of 450 volunteers
2. Formed a CRT Field Teams through the regeneration process spread across Java and Sumatra
3. Covered 18 regions across Java and Sumatra (100% from target)
4. Managed to do end-to-end intervention (from education to vaccination) in a total 1885 elderly (209% from target)
5. Carried out 1687 vaccinations (2nd and booster doses) supervised by authorized health workers (94% from target)

Methodology:

CRT was held for 4 months, from 10/21 – 03/22. In the first 2 months, we recruited team leader, core team, and 24 people divided into 3 team (field, campaign, and education) from all of Indonesia’s medstud. The coordination with external partners is held by National Officials.

We focused on advocating 18 primary health care (PHC) in all provinces in Indonesia for getting vaccines for elderly and the location of elderly who have not been vaccinated which helped by our locals. We trained 480 medstud as volunteers and prepared the program using financial support from doctorSHARE amounting to USD8,396. 

1 week before vaccination, our team educated the targeted elderly regarding vaccination’s urgency and informed consent to get vaccination approval. We use door-to-door methods and satellite centers in collaboration with PHC to minimize the exposure of the elderly to other diseases when vaccinating. To prevent injection errors, we asked doctors from PHC to supervise.

Plans for evaluation:

We evaluate this program using pre-test and post-test to measure the increase of knowledge after training the volunteers. We’re using a checklist method to assess the procedures for carrying out vaccinations by our volunteers. One of our targets is the number of primary health care achieved, which reached 18 PHC and the number of elderly that were vaccinated, counted 1687, through photo evidence of vaccination cards. We also evaluate our volunteers after teaching the elderly and carrying out vaccinations using the satisfaction assessment form. We also evaluate the success of the program based on a comparison of the number of vaccinated elderly people with the number of elderly educated by CIMSA.

External collaborations:

• DoctorSHARE x Cegah Stunting (NGO): grants for USD8,396.58
• IDS Med and DoctorSHARE provide workshop to 480 volunteers
• dr. Brian Sri as expert staff at Executive office of the President of the Republic of Indonesia (GO) as main expert panelist
• Suzy Maria from FKUI RSCM Jakarta (hospital) and dr. Siti Nadia Tarmizi as Director General of Disease Control and Environmental Health, Ministry of Health (GO) as speakers
• UNICEF Indonesia and WHO Indonesia (United Nations agency) as expert panelists