The Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic outbreak affects all our lives on a day-to-day basis. These are also times, where our achievements in the field of HIV, viral hepatitis and TB and human rights based public health responses combating inequalities in health and addressing stigma and discriminationare are at stake.
Against this background we are highly concerned by the wave of public health measures in the Coronavirus pandemic and their impact on HIV, viral hepatitis, and TB services as some ignore the needs of the most vulnerable populations and lack human rights based approaches.
43 Organisations from 29 Countries participated in this Survey
Therefore, in June 2020, we asked our member organisations, which are NGO's, AIDS service organisations, activist- and community-based groups of people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS, TB and viral hepatitis as well as other key populations-led organisations, how the Coronavirus induced measures impact their work. First results of the survey show that AAE member organisations are struggling heavily with the impact of COVID-19 induced measures. From 4 June to 24 June 2020, 43 organizations from 29 countries[1] filled in the survey – 28 in English and 15 in Russian.
- 90% of the organizations provided face-to-face services before the COVID-19 outbreak. 58% of the organizations have stopped or reduced face-to-face services due to COVID-19 policies and measures.
- Most organizations (90.69%) had provided online services to their clients before the outbreak of COVID-19. 92.50% have already moved some of their face-to-face services to an online format and 71.79% are planning to move further services online.
- Regarding the changed services due to hygiene measures, only 25.93% of the English language replies stated that clients have taken up services to the same degree as before while it was 57.14% in the Russian language replies.
- 76.19% of the organisations had to invest funds into the application of new hygiene measures and 51.28% of the organizations stated that their service provisions will suffer if the current hygiene measures will be prolonged for longer than the next six months.
- About half of the organizations (53%) have been impacted financially by the COVID-19 pandemic and 74.41% expect further financial losses.
- In the English language survey 14.29% of the organizations stated that their existence might be at stake, while in the Russian language survey 46.67% of the organisations consider their existence to be at stake.
The survey report is to be published in September 2020. The survey is the first part of a two-phase survey. In order to get a broader picture on how the pandemic affects the future of their work, we intend to ask all 43 organisation again in 6 months to report us back to the same questions.
[1] In English: 2 organizations from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Greece, Poland and Romania. 1 organization from Cyprus, Ireland, Serbia, Czechia, Israel, Slovenia, Denmark, Italy, Slovakia, Finland, Latvia, Turkey, Ukraine, Georgia, Norway, Austria, Belgium, Hungary. In Russian: 5 organizations from Ukraine, 3 from Russia and Tajikistan, 2 from Latvia and 1 organization from Uzbekistan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Lithuania.
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