Sudan ECHO Programs

The CMRT Program:

The Community Medical Response Team project was initiated and supported by the coalition of Sudanese organizations against COVID-19 to combat the spread of COVID-19 in the community. During the second wave, access to healthcare has become more of a problem and isolation centers have limited capacity to accommodate the increasing number of cases. In addition, many universities have closed during the second wave, leading to many health profession students being at home or with reduced classes. Health profession students and graduates are used to providing simple medical interventions at the neighborhood level. Therefore, it is crucial that this workforce is leveraged at the community level to assist with home management of mild to moderate COVID-19 cases. The CMRT is a multidisciplinary team consisting of more than 400 trained facilitators with healthcare backgrounds, and implementers who have volunteered to serve at the community level. The goals of the CMRT are to: 

1. Reduce community spread of COVID-19. 
2. Reduce the pressure on already overwhelmed and crowded healthcare facilities.  
3. Empower healthcare students, graduates, and trainees with the tools to help their community combat COVID-19 
4. Establish a functional model for handling future outbreaks and pandemics 

Sudan ECHO Center of Excellence

The pilot work of the CMRT ECHO revealed two key issues to creating this ECHO network of virtual communities of learning: 1) the lack of basic infrastructure including electricity, and telecommunications and 2) valuable human resources and technical infrastructure to deliver ECHO operational expertise.  To assist Sudan in achieving the community health outcomes using academic community partnership, we have partnered with the ECHO Center of Excellence, which is a collaboration where ECHO hubs across Sudan can share vital infrastructure and human resources without duplicating efforts. In addition to creating a network of ECHO hubs to solve community problems through academic community partnerships, we will help link Sudanese students and researchers with their peers at UNMC.  This will enable learners to exchange knowledge and skills using the latest evidence-based guidelines and technologies.

The ECHO Center of Excellence and Sudan ECHO will provide the following:

1. Train students to implement innovative, community-based solutions to assist underserved Sudanese communities achieve improved health outcomes.
2. Support existing and future ECHO programs through human resources, equipment and ECHO telementorship training courses.