Journal Article

Strategies and challenges for maintaining the continuity of essential health services during a pandemic: a scoping review

Farahbakhsh, Mostafa, Gholipour, Kamal, Khoshmaram, Najibeh, Tabrizi, Jafar Sadegh

2025

Overview

Background The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a significant impact on health systems worldwide, resulting in disruptions to essential health service delivery, such as routine immunizations, maternal and child health, and treatment for communicable and noncommunicable diseases. These services have been disrupted due to the diversion of resources towards the COVID-19 response. Therefore, the objective of this scoping review was to identify the strategies and challenges associated with maintaining the continuity of essential health services during a pandemic. Methods This scoping review study was conducted in 2023 using the proposed Arksey and O’Malley framework. We conducted searches on PubMed, Scopus, ProQuest, and Web of Science using relevant keywords. Additionally, we searched Google Scholar, hand-searched reference lists of included studies, and reviewed organizational reports, websites, and other sources of information. Content analysis was employed to summarize the themes from the selected articles. Results Our search of major databases yielded 3,732 results. After the screening process, 47 articles were included in the scoping review. The extracted interventions were classified into six groups based on the building blocks of the World Health Organization health system: leadership and governance, access to essential medicines, health systems financing, the health workforce, health service delivery, and health information systems. Conclusions The implementation of effective strategies and interventions can help ensure the provision of essential health services during a pandemic. These strategies include leveraging technology for remote care, ensuring the safety of healthcare workers and patients, strengthening supply chains, and establishing flexible and adaptive healthcare systems.

• Publisher: BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,Springer Nature B.V,BMC
• Subject: Care and treatment / Childrens health / Content analysis / Continuity of care / Continuity of Patient Care - organization & administration / Continuum of care / Control / Coronaviruses / COVID-19 / COVID-19 - epidemiology / crisis / Data analysis / Delivery of Health Care - organization & administration / Disasters / Disease / Disease transmission / Drugs / emergency management in health services / Epidemics / Essential health services / Evidence-based medicine / Governance / Health Administration / Health care industry / Health Informatics / Health information / Health services / Health services administration / Health status / Healthcare systems / Homeless people / Humans / Immunization / Infectious diseases / Information sources / Information systems / Information technology / Intervention / Leadership / Literature reviews / Maternal & child health / Maternal characteristics / Medical personnel / Medical screening / Medicine / Medicine & Public Health / Methods / Noncommunicable diseases / Nursing Research / Pandemic / Pandemics / Patients / Public Health / SARS-CoV-2 / Strategies / Supply / Task forces / Workforce