The WHO Mongolia office in conjunction with the Ministry of Health and Sports (MOHS) of Mongolia conducted a risk communications simulation exercise on pandemic influenza preparedness. The exercise was held through ten teleconference facilities throughout Mongolia on 20 January, 2016. Approximately 200 health care professionals and communicators from ten different locations participated in the instructional exercise.
Participants were challenged with tasks that helped formulate strategies of communicating with public and media during public health emergencies. The participants who sat in five key units in the capital Ulaanbaatar and five strategic locations in the countryside developed strategies to address a cross-border influenza outbreak.
“It was a very effective\ training – we have found some of the questions and tasks to be quite tough as for example identifying most likely questions to be asked from the media during press conferences in emergency times and having smart answers to those as well as being tasked to draw a media strategy”, said Barkhas Azar, the MOHS Public Health Division officer in charge of risk communications.
“A key to a good emergency response is preparedness,” says Melinda Frost, a WHO Emergency Communications consultant who served as one of the exercise facilitators. “Being ready for any outbreak beforehand, having procedures to follow in place, being first to inform and devising and delivering public messages correctly and competently is a key to successful risk communications. This is a requirement for saving lives and preventing casualties.”
The MOHS senior management requested the WHO to support the health sector in general and the ministry in particular to improve national risk communication capacities. With the support of the WHO Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework (PIP) project, the MOHS has conducted a series of trainings for total of about 300 health managers, communications and health promotion officers and health service providers including emergency physicians in 2015. In addition to January’s instructional simulation exercise, the training topics included communications with media and social media for the senior staff of the MOHS national experts from infectious disease, zoonotic disease and epidemiology. The PIP-supported training package included trainings for communications offices of the ministry and agencies on using social media and infographics in risk communication.
“As everywhere in the world, social media has become one of the leading sources of news in Mongolia. And it’s beauty is in its interactive nature – one can like and share important information further down the network reaching thousands of people,” says Dr Narangerel D., the MOHS Emergency Operations Centre’s Coordinator. “Hence, the EOC has been actively using social media as Facebook and Twitter during emergencies as well peace times. The PIP –funded training in using social media for risk communications was absolutely valuable in improving our skills as communicators and as social media communicators.”
As a PIP Framework priority country Mongolia has been actively supported the PIP Framework project since 2014. Helping the country to improve its risk communications is an integral part of this support.
Ariuntuya Ochirpurev, the Emergency Surveillance and Response Programme technical officer in WHO Mongolia, says that a critical need for improving risk communications was identified in 2009 after a highly publicized chemical spill in Central Mongolia.
“This case, combined with the outbreak of H1N1 pandemic influenza in the same year, and an earlier SARS outbreak of 2003 demonstrated a pronounced need for improving health sector risk communications during public health emergencies and the Ministry of Health requested WHO to deliver the first ever training in Risk Communications in 2009,” says O.Ariuntuya. “Since then WHO continuously supported the MOHS under the Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases, a bi-regional strategy aimed at strengthening national health security of member states in the two regions of WHO: Western Pacific and South-East Asia. Now daily event-based surveillance and media monitoring informing risk assessment and risk communications efforts became an integral part of preparedness and response system of the Emergency Operations Centre.”
Under the PIP project an Emergency Operations Centre was established and equipped at the MOHS and three Emergency Operations Units were opened at the National Centre for Communicable Diseases, the National Centre for Zoonotic Diseases and the Public Health Institute in 2015. With the PIP Framework project support in the same year the MOHS introduced an incident management system, a standardized approach to the command, control and coordination of public health emergency response.
The timing of this support is ideal as capacity to communicate with the public during times of emergency increased simultaneously. With WHO support, the MOHS is planning to conduct a national risk communications capacity assessment this spring and devise a risk communications strategy and plans for this year and beyond based on the review findings.