A Surveillance System for the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Population During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and its ensuing mitigation measures have negatively affected the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) population. There is currently no surveillance system established to enhance our understanding of SARS-CoV-2 transmission to guide policy decision making to protect the MCH population in this pandemic. Based on reports of community and household spread of this novel infection, we present an approach to a robust family-centered surveillance system for the MCH population. The surveillance system encapsulates data at the individual and community levels to inform stakeholders, policy makers, health officials and the general public about SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics within the MCH population. Key words: • COVID-19 • Coronavirus • Maternal and child health • Family-centered • Surveillance system • Individual level data elements • Community level data elements • Community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Copyright © 2020 Ajewole et al. Published by Global Health and Education Projects, Inc. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in this journal, is properly cited.