WHO's Responsibilities
This is achieved by ensuring presence and operational capacity in the field to strengthen coordinated public health management for optimal immediate impact, collective learning and health sector accountability.
- Identify priority health and nutrition-related issues and ensuring that these are properly addressed in an integrated primary health care approach that preserves and strengthens local health system.
- Strengthening health and nutrition surveillance systems to enable monitoring of any changes, early warning of deterioration, and immediate life-saving action through outbreak response and technically sound nutrition interventions.
- Ensuring control of preventable ill health particularly communicable and vaccine-preventable diseases.
- Ensuring that risks related to the environment are recognized and properly managed.
- Ensuring access to basic, good quality, preventive and curative care including essential drugs and vaccines for all, with special focus on the especially vulnerable - the elderly, the very young, pregnant women, the disabled and the chronically ill.
- Ensuring that Humanitarian Health Assessment is in line with international standards and local priorities and does not compromise future health development.
- Advocating and negotiating for secure humanitarian access, and neutrality and protection of health workers, and the operation of services and structures as integral parts of public health provision.
- Ensuring that the lessons learnt in a crisis are used to improve health sector preparedness for future crises and disaster reduction.
- Defining an integrated health policy for preparedness, emergency response and post conflict, for a coherent health sector development resilient to emergencies, to link relief efforts with national capacities and initiate future health system reform.