Kathmandu, September 11, 2021 – The World Health Organization and Member
countries of South-East Asia Region discussed further strengthening
health emergency security systems to effectively respond to the ongoing
COVID-19 pandemic and prepare for future health emergencies.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges. No country
globally was prepared enough to deal with an emergency of this scale. It
is critical that lessons from the ongoing pandemic are used to inform
our efforts to strengthen health security systems,” said Dr Poonam
Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director WHO South-East Asia, at the
Seventy-Fourth Regional Committee meeting.
Strengthening emergency risk management has been a flagship priority
programme of the WHO South-East Asia Region since 2014, which has
consistently been scaling up response capacities since the 2004 Indian
Ocean tsunami, a mega disaster that hit six countries of the Region.
Months before the COVID-19 outbreak, Member countries of the Region had
adopted the ‘Delhi Declaration’ to strengthen emergency preparedness
capacities by scaling up risk assessment, increasing investments, and
enhancing implementation of multi-sectoral plans. Over the years, Member
countries made considerable progress in implementing the International
Health Regulations (IHR) (2005) for health emergency preparedness and
response.
“Countries fully utilized the existing core capacities to control
transmission and save lives while trying to match the unprecedented
challenges of the pandemic,” the Regional Director said, adding that
“critical gaps in our health security systems and arrangements need to
be addressed.”
The Member countries discussed reviewing and reforming various aspects
of preparedness, including but not limited to emergency governance
structures and workforce, surveillance and alert mechanisms, laboratory,
supply management systems, health-care system preparedness and risk
communication and community engagement.
The ongoing response has demonstrated that the highest level of
political leadership and involvement and functional multisectoral
arrangements are crucial in preparing for and responding to severe
health emergencies. Such arrangements enable timely, decisive and
largescale actions, such as whole-of-government, whole-of-society
responses and mobilization of financial resources. These arrangements
should be continuously reviewed and strengthened.
Another important lesson from the pandemic is the extraordinary scale of
surge capacities across the gamut of response from surveillance and
contact tracing to clinical management, laboratory testing, vaccination,
and community engagement, that the countries need to plan for.
The pandemic has reiterated the importance of effective alert mechanism
which ensures early notification and information sharing for global risk
assessments and coordinated, timely and decisive responses.
Another lesson learnt from the ongoing pandemic is the effectiveness of
non-pharmaceutical Public Health and Social Measures (PHSM). These
measures can stop transmission but also have significant socioeconomic
consequences. Hence, epidemiological analysis and response capacity
assessment should guide timely adjustment of PHSMs with stringent
measures being limited to where and when most needed.
Engaging with people for them to take informed decisions to adopt
preventive behavior, support surveillance, contact-tracing, quarantine,
and sharing correct information, is critical.
Dr Khetrapal Singh said Member countries must build, strengthen and
maintain core capacities required under IHR (2005) through developing
and implementing the national action plans for health security, linked
with health systems strengthening efforts.
“We must continue to work together to identify priority actions to
further strengthen health emergency preparedness and response capacities
to respond to the ongoing pandemic and prepare better for future
pandemics, emergencies and disasters,” the Regional Director said.
Corporate Comm India (CCI Newswire)
