Documenting progress made in preparedness

The United Republic of Tanzania and Lao PDR conducted progress reviews in February 2019 on implementing the International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005, with additional countries to follow as the World Health Assembly approaches.

This is part of the documentation that WHO together with Member States began in order to gauge progress—and the potential outcomes —from implementing the four components of the IHR monitoring and evaluation framework (IHR-MEF), the IHR-PVS national bridging workshops and national action plans for health security (NAPHS). This includes States Parties annual reporting, voluntary evaluations such as joint external evaluation, after action reviews and simulation exercises.

A few countries from each WHO region have expressed interest in this kind of progress documentation, which prioritizes those developing or updating their national plan for health security or equivalent. A small team of 3-4 experts from WHO and partners conduct preliminary desk reviews of plans, guidelines, policy/strategic documents and assessment / progress reports.

The team then visits the country, conducting field visits, interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders. The findings are analysed along with available documents, with the team providing a short debriefing and progress summary before submitting a detailed final report to the government. The WHO encourages countries to publish the report.

This documentation lends evidence for investment in preparedness and IHR capacity-building and shows priority areas for countries, WHO and partners to support. It also identifies best practices, challenges and lessons learned for IHR capacity building, as well as improvements in assessment, planning and implementation.

The findings of these visits will be presented at the Second Africa Health Forum which will take place on 26-28 March in Cape Verde.