IHR Meeting held

The International Health Regulations (IHR) are an international legal instrument that is binding on 196 countries across the globe, including all the Member States of WHO. Their aim is to help the international community prevent and respond to acute public health risks that have the potential to cross borders and threaten people worldwide. The IHR, which entered into force on 15 June 2007, require countries to report certain disease outbreaks and public health events to WHO. Building on the unique experience of WHO in global disease surveillance, alert and response, the IHR define the rights and obligations of countries to report public health events, and establish a number of procedures that WHO must follow in its work to uphold global public health security.

The first day of 3 days consultation meeting on Development of Provincial plan regarding implementation of IHR and global health security agenda (GHSA) was held at KMU on 19th Oct 2016. The meeting was organized by department of Health in collaboration WHO and hosted by KMU. Representatives from around 15 different department/organization attended this meeting. The meeting will continue for the next two days at PC Peshawar. 

 
Prior to it a Joint External Evaluation (JEE) regarding status of implentation of IHR was conducted on 27th April- 16th May, 2016 by a team of international experts from WHO and CDC. JEE mission experts assessed existing IHR related capacities in Pakistan where all provinces contributed their inputs on evaluation of 19 technical areas of IHR and GHSA. 
 
The Ministry of National Health Services and Coordination (NHSR&C) now require provinces to develop their own costed operational 5 years plan after consultation with stakeholders at provincial level following the recommendation of JEE mission. Dr Zia Ul Haq, Director ORIC KMU was part of the National team who helped JEE mission in studying the existing IHR situation in KP and formulating recommendation for the province of KP for IHR implementation. 
 
Prof Dr Hafizullah, VC KMU welcome all the participants at KMU and showed great interest in the implementation of IHR. He reminded the vision of KMU which is to advocate for good public health policy, evidence based clinical practice and efficient health care delivery systems.
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