Covid-19 Responses
AMSANT has been ahead of the curve and responding swiftly ever since COVID-19 was recognised as a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation in March 2020. This was evident during the recent ‘lock-down’ in Darwin and Alice Springs, when sending COVID information to member services to promote public safety was AMSANT’s first priority. We’ve acted quickly and decisively to protect the NT’s 90,000 Aboriginal people and, thus far, there have been no cases of community transmission of the COVID virus to anyone in the NT.
AMSANT’s public health officer and public health registrars have led the COVID campaigns to keep clinicians and health workers up-to-date with the latest developments in infection control, pandemic planning and vaccination roll-out. We also employed a clinical COVID advisor to support and educate the ACCHO sector about the pandemic; and to analyse information, gather evidence and review medical literature to best inform health workers at the clinics.
There’s a lot of conflicting and confusing data out there (about COVID and vaccinations) so we’ve recruited a new ‘vaccination promotion’ position to encourage people to ‘get the jab’ using health information, graphics and messages-in-language (on email, social media, and public displays).
This on-going research greatly improves the power and relevance of the information briefs that AMSANT provides to health workers, administrators and patients. From the beginning of the pandemic, AMSANT has worked closely with Congress health service in Alice Springs to develop a Territory-wide ‘infection control policy’, and education packages for clinicians about COVID epidemiology and swabbing techniques. Point-of-care COVID-testing machines were introduced to many clinics by Flinders University in 2020 and we helped enrol our member services in the program, and trained their staff to use the machines.
AMSANT has also delivered training and workshops in contact tracing, pandemic planning and the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) to all our members; in remote, regional and urban settings. Vaccinations became the ‘new normal’ in 2021 and we are delivering basic life support (BLS) training to all the vaccinators in our remote Aboriginal community controlled health services. We make daily assessments of the pandemic and its impacts, and continually update the people working in our sector with all significant COVID developments. COVID-19 is still with us, and will be for some time … AMSANT has resolved to take every practical step and every clinical innovation to keep Territorians safe and to ensure the NT remains at ‘zero cases of community transmission’.
Covid-19 Responses
Dr Liz Moore
Public Health Medical Officer