2,300 healthcare professionals working at public heath institutions in Macedonia, have undergone in the past three weeks an interactive online training, as part of the Health Ministry’s “COVID 19 Response Training”.

The training, developed by Project HOPE and the U.S-based Brown University, is implemented worldwide and follows World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations on how to contain the spread of the infection and teaches health workers how to protect themselves.

Due to the fact that a significant number of health workers have been infected with COVID-19 worldwide, the purpose of this training was to adopt a single set to measures aimed at protecting healthcare staff and teach them how to contain the spread of the infection. The aim of the project was to determine protocols on diagnosing, stabilizing and resuscitating patients, managing the situation, carrying out screening and triage, as well as determining healthcare system capacities, the Health Ministry said in a press release.

Initially, a group of 40 health workers (20 doctors and 20 nurses) took part in a four-day training taught by experts from Brown University, after which they trained an additional 2,300 of their colleagues.

Staffers from the “Mother Teresa” Clinical Center, the “8 September” General Hospital, the children’s hospital in Kozle, and a number of other hospitals and public health institutes throughout the country participated in the project. Medical students were also given the opportunity to attend training sessions.

Organizing an online training program aimed to protect healthcare workers, when they have been forced to face an unknown virus that has spread in a relatively short time, was really challenging. The fact that 2,300 people took part in the project and were able to share their knowledge with their colleagues will play a role lowering the virus’ transmission rate among healthcare workers, the press release read.