Joint external evaluation of the International Health Regulations (2005) core capacities of Botswana: mission report, 11-15 March 2024
Overview
The International Health Regulations (IHR 2005) is a global framework for health security that mandates each country to build and sustain agreed IHR core public health capacities for prevention, preparedness, detection and response to public health emergencies. Botswana, as a State Party to the IHR 2005, has made significant strides in implementing these regulations since they came into action in 2007. The second JEE assessed Botswana's level of attainment of the IHR core capacities, using the World Health Organization (WHO) IHR JEE tool version 3.0.
The evaluation was conducted in March 2024 by a team of external experts with international experience in diverse technical areas along with technical experts from Botswana's government bodies, academic institutions and development partners. It involved discussions across 19 technical areas, site visits at national and subnational levels, and resulted in collaborative development of priority actions. This comprehensive report presents the technical area indicators’ scores, highlights the strengths and challenges as well as priority actions by technical area, with an emphasis on identified cross-cutting themes that require immediate attention for enhanced health security.
Botswana has demonstrated commendable progress in several areas of IHR implementation, however several areas of improvement have been identified to ensure enhanced capacities for emergency preparedness and response. During the JEE the following key overarching strengths were identified.
