Proposed Actions at the Health Care Provider Level
| A. Innovation, Digital Technology, and E-Communications |
| • Support and participate in new and ongoing development of COVID-19 mHealth and app technologies designed for early screening and daily management of infected patients. |
| • Deploy mHealth and disease self-management programmes/tools, which are especially relevant when patients and families are in self-isolation. |
| • Support and strengthen official online platforms for regional and global networks of health care providers sharing practical experience in dealing with COVID-19. |
| • Support and promote a concerted effort that may lead to a shared approach in making decisions in self-management programmes targeting high-risk populations. |
| B. Diagnosis, Treatment, Equipment |
| • Follow evidence-based scientific reports and WHO recommendations on effective and efficacious diagnostic tests and treatments for COVID-19. |
| • Increase the production and provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) to all health care workers in all settings in all countries. |
| • Increase the manufacture and supply of sufficient respiratory ventilators to meet the global needs for COVID-19, across all continents and health care settings – acute, primary/pediatrics, community or long-term care. |
| • Ensure co-ordination between primary and secondary care in terms of adequate and well-defined integrated care pathways for CRD patients, in the context of COVID-19 and other future epidemics / pandemics, with clear guidelines for referral. |
| • Support the logistics of facility cleaning and clinical waste disposal for community services. |
| • Establish a compensation process for those who have been infected at work by the COVID-19 (work-related disease). |
| C. Training & Research |
| • Promote and ensure validated and adequate training on various aspects of COVID-19 and other emergent infections and their effects on CRDs to health care staff, at different levels of care and locations. |
| • Promote and support innovative, high quality, clinical and translational research focusing on optimisation of prevention, diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 pandemic as well as its effects on CRD patients. |
| • Promote large collaborative, multinational epidemiological studies as well as randomised controlled trials to assess the relevance of factors such as BCG vaccination in protection against COVID-19, namely in patients with CRD. |
| • Support creation of international networks and registries of clinical research on COVID-19 and CRDs. |