Sri Lanka’s National Action Plan for Health Security 2024-2028 (NAPHS) development workshop was held from 27-29 February 2024 in a multi-stakeholder consultative effort utilizing the e-NAPHS tool developed by the World Health Organization. Sri Lanka is the first country globally to utilize the e-NAPHS online tool which enables the progress review and monitoring of the 12–24 months operational plans of the NAPHS across sectors and stakeholders. Over 80 national subject matter specialists and technical representatives from the 19 technical areas took part in the event alongside partners from World Bank, Asian Development bank, European Union and United Nations Agencies and technical representatives from WHO Headquarters, WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia and WHO Sri Lanka.

The e-NAPHS is designed to be a practical, comprehensive online tool that will help Member States to plan and implement actions and monitor the progress of activities against their strategic results. It can be adapted to the country profile, will also allow integration and update of relevant assessments of International Health Regulation (IHR) capacities and other data. This will allow faster transition from assessment to action and standardize the progress tracking mechanism.

In 2023, as preparation for the development of the NAPHS 2024-2028, Sri Lanka underwent several key assessments under International Health Regulations monitoring and evaluation framework, namely the International Health Regulations - Performance of Veterinary Services (PVS) national bridging workshop (IHR-PVS NBW), Strategic Toolkit for Assessing Risk (STAR), Performance of Veterinary Services assessment  through World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) and conducted the repeat Joint External Evaluation (JEE) of IHR capacities in September last year.  The NAPHS utilized the recommendations from the above national capacity reviews and IHR assessments and translated these findings into concrete activities and prioritized actions.

The NAPHS consultation process started immediately after the JEE 2023 and aimed at reaching consensus regarding priority strategic actions and way forward.  Sri Lanka was successful in having the NAPHS workshop within 6 months of completing the JEE.

Following the last NAPHS which ran across 2018-2023, the new NAPHS aims to incorporate lessons learnt in half a decade and the unique experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also the first instance where a five-year NAPHS will now be accompanied by a two-year operational plan which is a living document.

The first day of the NAPHS consultation workshop was dedicated towards reaching consensus on priority strategic actions. 51 priority strategic actions were finalized. The second and third days focused on defining the activities that will be included in the operational plan for 2024-2025. The two-year operational plan will be costed, and a resource mapping effort will be conducted through WHO REMAP exercise.

A post-facto debriefing session was held to identify key lessons from this effort and to review how best the NAPHS process can be streamlined going forward and key improvements when the e-NAPHS is rolled out in other countries. High level advocacy, continuous monitoring and periodic evaluation and routine testing of national systems using after action reviews/ simulation exercises were identified as key next steps and recommendations for successful implementation of NAPHS and its operational plan.

The NAPHS process in Sri Lanka demonstrated the whole of government approach and commitment from the highest level among all the agencies working together to strengthen international health regulations.  The NAPHS has identified the critical areas of health security and supports advocacy for high priority investment in health security by mobilizing domestic and external resources.  It underlines the critical importance of preparedness planning and of allocating funding not only to human health, but also to all sectors involved in health security.

Further the collaborative, NAPHS process strengthens trust and fosters transparency, continuous learning, and mutual accountability between national governments and their international partners. The Sri Lanka NAPHS strategic and operational plans will be publicly available in the coming months.

Please click here to read the original article