Lack of funding, the COVID-19 pandemic, and attacks on health care make Afghanistan’s health system fragile. Community perceptions on healthcare can inform better health programming.

The 34 camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh are some of the most densely populated areas in the world, housing some 860,000 Rohingya refugees who have fled their native country to seek protection from persecution and violence. Fears of a deadly coronavirus outbreak prompted a swift government-issued lockdown in March 2020, with humanitarians having to limit operations to essential services only.

As the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, we knew that listening to community feedback about what worked and what didn’t would be more important than ever when humanitarians, health workers, governments, and others came together to combat the virus.

Ground Truth Solutions worked with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) to engage volunteers across its 49 countries of operation in Africa.

As a part of our global initiative to gauge perceptions on Covid-19, we have partnered with the UNOPS Iraq Information Centre (IIC) to hear what refugees, returnees, and IDPs have to say about the response to the pandemic.

In Somalia, we are conducting country-wide telephone surveys with internally displaced people, people in need, and Somali citizens.

Containment and successful treatment of COVID-19 is contingent on community behaviour, which is inherently linked to information, trust and risk perception.

As the global pandemic emerged in early 2020, it presented unprecedented challenges both to refugee communities across Uganda and the humanitarian response implemented on their behalf.

Covid-19 has sparked an economic crisis that will disproportionately affect the most vulnerable members of society, particularly in humanitarian contexts. The Cash Barometer project explores its economic impact, helping humanitarians to better understand its various effects, as well as to what extent recipients’ perspectives inform cash and voucher assistance (CVA) responses, on two levels: global and in-country.

In the Central African Republic (CAR), Ground Truth Solutions has worked with UNICEF to track the perceptions of affected communities and other key actors on the humanitarian response to Covid-19.

Ground Truth Solutions, in partnership with the British Red Cross (BRC), provided remote support to the Lebanese Red Cross Society (LRCS) and Zimbabwe Red Cross Society (ZRCS) to put in place mechanisms to tap public perceptions about Covid-19.