O

ver the years, epidemics and natural disasters have claimed a high number of lives and have had a major impact on society. For countries affected by these events and for international actors as well, the critical challenge lies in the difficulty of managing these large-scale events. The 2014 epidemic of Ebola in West Africa, and its subsequent spread to several nations in Europe, the United States, and other countries, caused global alarm and highlighted the need to make substantive changes to the way the World Health Organization (WHO) carries out its alert and emergency response operations for outbreaks and disasters. To this end, WHO, United Nations agencies, and other international organizations, conducted evaluations that reached the same conclusion:  a new WHO Health Emergencies Program was needed.

A New WHO Health Emergencies Program

On 25 May 2016, during the 69th meeting of the World Health Assembly, member countries approved one of the most important reforms since WHO was created in 1947, establishing the new Health Emergencies Program. This decision will generate substantial changes—both in terms of the Organization’s work and its culture—when it comes to dealing with health emergencies. It calls for establishing one single program, with a workforce, budget, standards and processes, and clear lines of authority.

The new Health Emergencies Program adds operational capacity to WHO’s work in outbreaks and humanitarian emergencies to complement its traditional technical and normative roles. The new program is designed to deliver rapid, predictable, and comprehensive support to countries and communities as they prepare for, face, or recover from emergencies caused by any type of hazard to human health, whether disease outbreaks, natural or man-made disasters or conflicts.

Position of the Region of the Americas

In a joint statement, the delegations representing Latin American and Caribbean countries at the World Health Assembly expressed satisfaction with the progress made on this issue and their support for WHO’s new Health Emergencies Program. They also acknowledged that since 1976, their WHO regional office for the Americas (the Pan American Health Organization) has had a Department of Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Relief, a “proven mechanism that has effectively responded to emergencies and disasters in the region of the Americas, within the framework of WHO.”

These countries also noted that their support for the new WHO Health Emergencies Program is “with the understanding that the PAHO program will continue to fully respond to the needs of member states in the Americas, working and coordinating, as appropriate, with the WHO Program.”

The Pan American Health Organization and the WHO Emergency Reform

In the context of the WHO Emergency Reform, PAHO will functionally align its work with the new WHO Health Emergencies Program. It will also expand collaboration between PAHO and WHO to identify a greater number of experts ready and able to be mobilized to and from the Americas in emergency situations and will share the financing of these response operations. 

PAHO will also continue to deploy its staff and the Regional Response Team (registered and trained by the Organization) to support the member states of both the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization.

The WHO Emergency Reform complements PAHO’s vision, which seeks to achieve a health sector that has sufficient capacity, is led nationally, and sustained to ensure that member states have the resilience to protect the physical, mental and social wellbeing of their communities, and that they are able to rapidly recover from the impact of health emergencies and disasters.