In times of health and sanitary crisis, laboratories are crucial in providing reliable data for emergency preparedness and response. In Zimbabwe, Ronald Timbe, UN Volunteer Medical Epidemiologist, is engaged through WHO in COVID-19 response surveillance activities led by the Ministry of Health and Child Care. He works on the development and revision of COVID-19 surveillance tools, including the production of situation reports.

While COVID-19 severely impacted the most vulnerable communities, its effects were also felt across UN programme countries, reversing many positive gains in sustainable development. To support countries and UN partners in their response to the pandemic, the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme invested its resources to deploy UN Volunteers with partners, financed through its UNV Special Voluntary Fund.*

The scope of my work is centered on preventing non-communicable disease risk factors, which include tobacco consumption, alcohol abuse, unhealthy diets and physical inactivity. These all contribute to the increasing prevalence of non-communicable diseases like diabetes, hypertension and cancer, to name just a few. People who suffer most from the complications of COVID-19 are those with non-communicable diseases. Thus, I am determined to help countries prevent these diseases.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased demand for remote work and data access. At the same time, countering stereotypes and misinformation has become necessary for the progress of the pandemic response efforts. However, in many countries, the information systems and architecture necessitated by remote environments have lagged behind. As a result, access to health information and healthcare has been complicated.

During 2020, the WHO Country Office in Kazakhstan initiated and conducted several missions in collaboration with Dr Joanna Zwetyenga (Denmark), Technical Expert on Laboratory issues, Biosecurity and Biosafety from the WHO Regional Office in Europe. The first mission concluded with Dr Zwetyenga developing an action plan to strengthen laboratory response to COVID-19, with recommendations to train national mentors to support the laboratory capacity of staff conducting testing for SARS-CoV-2.

With experience as a UN Volunteer and now, as UNDP Resident Representative, I can confidently say UN Volunteers share three essential and common traits in order to rise to the occasion:

For almost two years, I have been working with the UNDP Pacific Office in Fiji. I am part of the inclusive growth team, supporting entrepreneurship, small and micro businesses, livelihoods and innovation in Pacific Island countries and territories. Our unit is relatively small and dynamic, so although my assignment title is in communications and partnerships, I have been engaged in diverse initiatives, together with other team members. For example, I have coordinated entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives, which I implemented with a national UN Volunteer.