Covid-19 Psycho-social Impact among United Nations Staff in Burundi

Abstract

The coronavirus (Covid-19) is a pandemic that threatens many people’s lives. The objective of this study was to explore the Covid-19 psycho-social impact on Staff working in the United Nations in Burundi from October 2021 to 31st January 2022. This was a cross-sectional study involving 312 study participants. Univariate and bivariate analysis were processed using SPSS 25, and the Chi-square test was calculated with a p<0.05. As a result, all psycho-social components assessed were affected by Covid-19. The Staff experienced a very high level of psycho-social impact (very severe) which varied from 31% for being afraid of financial problems and unhappiness due to missing professional support from colleagues to 47% for being afraid of a family member infected by Covid-19. Also, we assessed their particularity of psycho-social impact due to the exposure of being clinical or non-clinical Staff, whereby, clinical Staff had a lower risk of being affected compared to the non-clinical Staff in some components. For instance, clinical Staff was 0.39 times more affected by fear of being infected by Covid-19 compared to non-clinical Staff (CI= (0.23,0.65). Also, there are some components where the impacts were similar for clinical and non-clinical Staff (Chi-square test p-value > 0.05 and CI of odds ratios cross 1). Thus, UN employees were negatively affected by Covid-19 from a psycho-social standpoint. The study recommends UN agencies in Burundi support staff by providing emergency psychological support and, if required to give medical treatment for job optimization. Hence, staff psycho-social status must be constantly checked and kept stable. Keywords: Covid-19, Impact, Psycho-social, Staff, United Nations.