WHO guidance on preparing for national response to health emergencies and disasters

Overview

WHO Guidance on Preparing for National Response to Health Emergencies and Disasters: WHO guidance for developing national health emergency response operations plan (NHEROP) for all hazards

Emergencies and disasters from multiple hazards affect lives and livelihoods of people through their direct and indirect impacts.  Moreover, they have a long-lasting influence on healthcare systems and often disrupt and discourse the development agenda of countries.

Such emergency and disasters warrant immediate actions by all systems, sectors and stakeholders including private sectors and international community in a country. A national health emergency response operations plan helps the countries to take systematic risk informed actions, engage all key stakeholders including communities, establish a defined leadership to respond to emergencies and disasters at all levels aiming to address health risks from multiple hazards. This is one of the key attributes for a country to be prepared for emergencies and disasters as required under the International Health Regulations.

Based upon the analysis of several emergency responses and the good practices globally, a guidance was developed to support countries in developing and designing the national health emergency response operations plan for multiple hazards. The guidance draws on the Health emergency and disaster risk management Framework, refers to country emergency risk profiles and builds on all existing capacity development plans including the National Action Plan for Health Security. It also refers to the WHO Emergency Response Framework to ensure alignment with WHO actions for health response. The guidance has been further updated reflecting the learning from the COVID-19 response on the ground, at all levels.

This document suggests mechanisms that countries can use to respond to emergencies and disasters taking a whole of society and whole of government approach ensuring multisectoral engagement for health actions. It helps to run a participatory process of developing the national health response operations plan that brings together all relevant sectors, public health experts, civil society and the international community under government leadership and facilitate ownership, adoption, testing through simulation and finally successful implementation in responding to emergencies and disasters from multiple hazards.