A report on recent assessment of Malaysia’s health security was released today, which found that the country has made tremendous progress in strengthening capacities to respond to health emergencies and disasters in the last decade. This was accomplished through use of a step-by-step strategy for strengthening health security, well-established control and coordination mechanisms, a multisectoral and collaborative approach, and a robust national surveillance system.
The voluntary Joint External Evaluation (JEE) of International Health Regulation Core Capacities was requested by the Malaysian government and conducted with WHO in late 2019. A group of international and national experts jointly reviewed Malaysia’s health security capacities across 19 technical areas. This exercise helps measure a country’s status and identify progress and the most critical gaps within human and animal health systems and for the containment of environmental hazards.
The subsequent identification of gaps enabled the prioritization of needs and opportunities for enhanced capacity to prevent, detect and rapidly respond to public health emergencies and further bolster Malaysia’s health security and multi-sectoral preparedness and response capacity for health emergencies.
“This voluntary evaluation that we had requested indicates that we are ready to be evaluated and open to constructive criticism. I appreciate the meticulous work that has been put in to develop a resilient public health system in Malaysia. The WHO JEE team has been thorough in their evaluation and their findings have been a boost to our healthcare system which explains the national control measures that are in place for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We aspire to shine not just within this region, but also globally. Health has become the nation's priority and we are thankful for the abundant contributions and support from multi-agencies and public and private partnerships. I am very proud of these accomplishments and collaborations and in solidarity, we will win the battle against COVID-19 and any other health emergencies faced in the future,” said the Honourable Minister of Health Malaysia, YB Dato’ Seri Dr Adham Baba.
“We commend the Malaysian government for the positive findings from the joint external evaluation. This is a testament to Malaysia’s all-out effort towards building its capacities to respond to health emergencies. These capacities have been put to the test, but timely and proactive preparedness has helped establish a stable foundation for the outbreak response to COVID-19,” said Dr Lo Ying-Ru, WHO Head of Mission and Representative to Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam and Singapore.
“There are opportunities for further investment in health security systems, working with the private sector and ensuring full multisectoral implementation of the International Health Regulation, or IHR (2005). WHO will continue to collaborate with Malaysia in the area of emergency preparedness and response,” Dr Lo added.
About the IHR (2005) and joint external evaluation of core capacities
The IHR (2005) is the legal framework to enhance global health security where all WHO Member States are required to develop minimum core capacities. The evaluation is one of the components of the IHR (2005) Monitoring and Evaluation Framework and guides the systematic review of capacities as a voluntary, collaborative, multisectoral process coordinated by WHO.
The components of the evaluation are also included in the Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases and Public Health Emergencies (APSED III), which serves as a common framework for action for countries in the Region to improve their health emergency preparedness and meet their obligations under IHR (2005). Based on APSED, the Malaysian government developed two versions of its strategy to enhance health security through the Malaysia strategy for emerging diseases and public health emergencies (MySED) – MySED I and MySED II.
Link: Joint external evaluation of IHR core capacities of Malaysia