A multinational e-survey on the delivery of cardiology services in Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic: what should we expect after this pandemic?

Objective

To evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the delivery of cardiology services in Africa.

Design

Cross-sectional e-survey study.

Setting

African countries

Participants

Cardiologists

Primary and Secondary outcomes measures

The primary outcome was the change in service delivery in African cardiology units during the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. The secondary outcomes were the satisfaction of cardiologists with regards to the workload and factors associated with this satisfaction.

Results

There was a significant reduction in working time and the number of patients consulted by week during this pandemic (p<0.001). In general, there was a decrease in the overall activities in cardiovascular care delivery. The majority of cardiology services (76.5%) and consulting programs (85%) were adjusted to the pandemic. Only half of the participants were satisfied with their workload. Reconfiguration of the consultation schedule was associated with a reduced satisfaction of participants (p=0.02).

Conclusions

COVID-19 is associated with an overall reduction in cardiology services rendered in Africa. Since the cardiovascular burdens continue to increase in this part of the World and the risk of cardiovascular complications linked to SARS COV2 remains unchanged cardiology, departments in Africa should anticipate a significant surge of cardiology services demanded by patients after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Strengths and limitations of this study

• The study is one of the first African studies to report the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the delivery of cardiology services which are very important for Africans given the high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases in this continent.

• The multinational design of the study leading to the inclusion of 14 African countries makes the results generalizable to the entire African.

• The cross-sectional design of the study represents a major limitation as it remains impossible to either infer causality or untangle bi-directional relationships between the reduction of the delivery in cardiology services and the pandemic or participants’ satisfaction.

• Also, the e-survey was drawn in English and this might have restricted the participation by some non-English African respondents due to the language barrier. Hence, perhaps contributing to the relatively small sample size of the study.