On 5th May, COUNTDOWN partners from six countries met virtually to discuss the current impact COVID-19 is having on NTD programmes and research activities in each country context. It was determined that COUNTDOWN would produce a blog series focusing on the effects of COVID-19 on NTD programmes and research and also daily life. In the following months, three types of blogs were released:
- A series of five introductory blog posts and a summary blog post released at the end of the series.
- Cross-country conversation blog posts. Partner pairings chatted virtually about the impacts of COVID-19 using a topic guide and worked together to produce blog posts which discuss differences and similarities between the COVID-19 situation in each country as well as how the pandemic is affecting daily life and research.
- Day in the Life blog posts- researchers recorded their daily life in lockdown using Photovoice methodology. These blog posts consist of a selection of photos from individuals with captions and explanations.
There was a total of 17 blog posts in this series from 22 authors and contributors across partners in all six COUNTDOWN countries. All COUNTDOWN blog posts can be viewed here.