Dar es Salam - Over the recent years, climate change and natural disasters have increased in frequency and severity. They arrest development and disrupt livelihoods.

The management of these risks is vital to protect people’s health from emergencies and disasters, to ensure local, national, and global health security, to attain Universal Health Coverage and to build the resilience of communities, countries, and health systems.

In a bid to strengthen management and response, Tanzania is collaborating with the United Nations to improve competencies to prepare, manage and respond better to disasters.

Key amongst the discussions were, reflections on priority areas of the capacity diagnosis namely, disaster risk governance, understanding risk, investing in disaster and climate risk resilience, and disaster preparedness and response capacity.

The training had representatives from various units and departments of all the institutions, public and private and central level. These participants were very instrumental in the assessment of disaster and climate risk management in Mainland and Zanzibar in 2022.

Aside the workshop, the United Nations including World Health Organization (WHO) have been working closely with the government to address disaster management issues in the country. This includes a scoping mission undertaken by the Capacity for Disaster Reduction Initiative.

The assessment identified key strength, challenges and gaps and proposed remedies. The assessment involved experts from the Government, the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC), and Non-Governmental organizations.

The recommendation from the workshop is slated to be submitted for high-level political validation for implementation across the country.