Abstract

Introduction:  Cardiovascular diseases are the main cause of morbidity and mortality in the Americas and in Chile. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the supply of health services in primary care, affecting the attention of communities with a high prevalence of chronic diseases. In Chile, the Cardiovascular Health Program provides multi-professional primary care to people with these diseases.

Aim:  To describe the variation in the care assistance of the Cardiovascular Health Program to the communities of the province of Santiago de Chile, along the period of 2014 to 2020 and its relation to the multidimensional poverty during the pandemic.

Method:  This is a descriptive and ecological study. The percentage of variation in nursing, medicine, and nutrition care was analyzed for each community, using the records of the Ministry of Health of Chile. The variation from 2019 to 2020 was investigated as a description of the assistance of the Cardiovascular Health Program provided during the first year of the pandemic and its association with multidimensional poverty.

Results:  The COVID-19 pandemic strongly impacted the quality of assistance of the Cardiovascular Health Program control services in the province of Santiago. The controls decreased by an average of 60.43 %. The nutrition services were the most affected and the least affected were the physician services. This impact was not associated with the multidimensional poverty level in each community.

Conclusions:  It is important to monitor the impact of the pandemic on the assistance of the most prevailing chronic diseases in the population and to anticipate the consequences that this implies.

Keywords: Cardiovascular Diseases; Chronic Disease; COVID-19; Public Health Nursing; Public Health Surveillance