Context

All Member States have the responsibility to build and maintain effective capacities and systems for prevention, detection and response to public health emergencies of international concern and to abide by relevant international rules, including the implementation of the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005).

Planning is a key component of the emergency preparedness cycle and the National Action Plans for Health Security (NAPHS) and other national health strategies and capacity building plans are critical to ensure country-wide priorities and capacities are planned, documented, built, strengthened and sustained in order to keep the world safe, serve the vulnerable and promote health and equity.

Countries have already been developing plans for health security using different formats and with varying levels of implementation. WHO, technical agencies and financial partners have also in some instance provided support in the development and implementation of these plans but there are opportunities to bring more consistency in the approach and methodology. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has, in most Member States hindered implementation of these plans as the pandemic prioritized countries’ focus towards emergency response operations. Now over 2.5 years into the pandemic, many Member States are eager to incorporate critical lessons from the pandemic into their revised national action plans and to “build back better”, invest in national health systems, strengthening the capacities required under the IHR and health security, while enhancing their national emergency preparedness and response capacity.

Over the past few months, WHO’s Country Assessment and Planning (CAP) Team has engaged and consulted with the six WHO regional offices and technical teams within WHO to initiate the development of a strategy, along with inputs and experiences from other technical partners and stakeholders. This strategy defines WHO’s vision for the NAPHS in the next 5 years (2022-2026). While aligning with regional strategies and initiatives, the goal of the strategy is to support Member States to accelerate NAPHS implementation.

Purpose and objectives of the consultation

This global consultation brought together over 128 participants from 18 countries, 13 partner organisations and all six WHO regional offices. It was the culmination of 6 months of virtual consultation with the regional offices and subject matter experts from WHO headquarters and from partner organisations.

The purpose of this meeting was to launch the WHO corporate NAPHS Strategy (2022- 2026), to build consensus on the linkages with existing IHR/health security activities and initiatives, as well as set up the mechanisms needed to manage the implementation of the strategy. The meeting also considered how lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic can best be incorporated within the NAPHS process.

The specific objectives of the meeting were to:

• Identify key linkages of the NAPHS to existing IHR/health security activities and initiatives (i.e., financing, SPAR/JEE assessments, IAR/AAR, SimEx, resources mapping, PVS-IHR NBW, benchmarks, GSPN, NHPSP, Risk assessments);

• Review and develop the terms of reference and membership of group to support the NAPHS strategy.

• Review the draft results framework to help accelerate NAPHS implementation;

• Develop an implementation plan with the WHO regional offices, technical leads and external partners & stakeholders on where and how they can contribute to the effective implementation of the strategy.

Please click here to view the full meeting report