Resources

The COVID-19 Global HRP is a joint effort by members of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), including UN, other international organizations and NGOs with a humanitarian mandate, to analyse and respond to the direct public health and indirect immediate humanitarian consequences of the pandemic, particularly on people in countries already facing other crises.

The Global Health Security (GHS) Index is the first compre-hensive assessment and benchmarking of health security and related capabilities across the 195 countries that make up the States Parties1 to the International Health Regu-lations (IHR [2005]).2 The GHS Index is a project of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (JHU) and was developed with The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). These organizations believe that, over time, the GHS Index will spur measur-able changes in national health security and improve international capability to address one of the world’s most omnipresent risks: infectious disease outbreaks that can lead to international epidemics and pandemics.

Benchmarking is a strategic process often used by businesses and institutes to standardize performance in relation to best practices of their sector. World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners have developed a tool with a list of benchmarks and corresponding actions that can be applied to increase the performance of countries in emergency preparedness through the development and implementation of a National Action Plan for Health Security (NAPHS). The WHO Benchmarks for International Health Regulations 2005 (IHR/IHR (2005)) Capacities are broad in nature to improve IHR capacities for health security and integrate multisectoral concerns at subnational (local and regional/provincial) and national levels. This means that if all benchmarks are achieved and sustained, the level of preparedness of the country would be optimum to prevent, detect and respond to threats and events.

The first edition of the WHO Joint External Evaluation (JEE) tool was made available in February 2016, and by the end of December 2017 67 countries had requested a JEE to WHO and completed the voluntary evaluation using this tool.

In accordance with the 2017 Kampala Declaration, which extended GHSA’s mandate by 5 years, the GHSA Steering Group leda consultative process todevelop a framework for the second phaseof GHSA, termed “GHSA 2024.” The GHSA 2024 Framework provides a high-level view of the context for GHSA’s goals and objectives for 2019-2024 and an outline of how GHSA will operate and track progress to achieve these goals. As needed, the GHSA Steering Group will consider changes to the Framework. The Steering Group will conduct a consultation with the GHSA-wide communityon any proposed changes.