Pandemic preparedness and response priorities in Latin America: A regional Delphi consensus.

Abstract

Objective: The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response issued a series of recommendations for future pandemic preparedness and response. Latin America's COVID-19-related deaths represented 25 % of the global demises, despite harboring less than 8 % of the world's population. As little data exists to support whether the Panel's recommendations reflect public health professionals' priorities in the region the study aimed to define these priorities utilizing a Delphi study.

Study design: A consensus-building modified Delphi technique.

Methods: For the first two rounds, participants were asked to rank a list of topics across seven domains on a 4-point Likert scale. Topics voted by at least 75 % of participants in either round as very important were included in the final round. Participants ranked the topics from each of the seven domains in numeric order to define top priorities.

Results: A total of 115 responses were obtained across three rounds. Most respondents were involved in direct efforts against COVID-19 (75·0-86·%) and a considerable proportion had more than 16 years of public health experience (37·3-50·0 %). The top priority issues were zoonotic disease-pathogen surveillance systems (27·4 points), robust infection and prevention control programs (22·8 points), and indicator and event-based monitoring and reporting systems (22·1 points).

Conclusions: Establishing priorities for future pandemics is critical to ensure better health outcomes. The region should strengthen collaboration and enhance its capacities while conducting country-level analysis and defining priorities for future arrangements.