About the programme area
The World Health Organization African Region continues to be affected by recurrent outbreaks and other health emergencies, resulting in unacceptably high morbidity, mortality, and socioeconomic disruptions. The outbreaks also threaten national, regional and global health security. Many of these emergencies can be prevented or their impact can be significantly reduced by proactively addressing the underlying determinants and core capacity gaps.
In order to support Member States to address outbreaks and other health emergencies, the Country Preparedness and International Health Regulations (CPI) Programme of the WHO Health Emergencies (WHE) Programme, WHO African Region has formulated three strategic objectives:
- To support risk assessment, mapping, monitoring and evaluation of countries' capacity to prevent, detect and respond to health and humanitarian emergencies;
- To support country planning and build country capacity in the International Health Regulations, IHR (2005) core capacities; and
- To serve as the secretariat to guide the implementation of the IHR (2005).
The CPI Programme area has adopted an all-hazards approach to prioritize support to the most vulnerable and low capacity countries. All actions are guided by the Regional Strategy for Health Security and Emergencies and the Regional Strategy for Disaster Risk Management.
The CPI Programme area in the WHO African region has two main units:
- International Health Regulations and Global Health Security
- Risk Management and Preparedness.
Using the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) strategy, the IHR Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (2015) and the Disaster Risk Management (DRM) tools, the CPI Programme provides technical assistance to Member States in the following critical areas:
- Strategic risk profiling
- Vulnerability and risk analysis and mapping
- IHR(2005) core capacity assessment
- DRM country capacity assessment
- Country preparedness
- All-hazard national action plans for health security and emergencies.
- Scale up and enhancement of Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR)
- Robust Early Warning and Response (EWAR) in emergency settings
- Institutional capacity building and human resource skill development in emergency management
- Monitoring and evaluation
All three levels of WHO contribute to the achievement of the main outputs of the CPI Programme:
- Independent assessment of country core capacities for health emergency preparedness and implementation of the IHR (2005) and development of national action plans
- Strengthening and sustainability of critical core capacities for health emergency preparedness and response, disaster risk management and implementation of the IHR in all countries
- Development of operational readiness/contingency plans (with the cooperation of partners), with testing for specific threats in highly vulnerable countries
- Secretariat support to countries for implementation of the IHR (2005).
For more information, please contact:
Dr Ali Ahmed Yahaya (aliahmedy [at] who.int), Programme Area Manager, CPI
Dr Ambrose Otau Talisuna (talisuna [at] who.int), Regional Advisor, IHR & Global Health Security
Dr Ngoy Nsenga (nsengan [at] who.int), Regional Advisor, Risk Management & Preparedness