The interagency emergency health kit 2011 : medicines and medical devices for 10,000 people for approximately 3 months
Overview
UN agencies and international and nongovernmental organizations are increasingly called upon to respond to large‐scale emergencies to prevent and manage serious threats to the survival and health of the affected populations. Medicines and medical devices (renewable and equipment) have been supplied by relief agencies for decades. In the 1980s, the World Health Organization (WHO) facilitated a process to encourage the standardization of medicines and medical devices needed in emergencies to allow efficient and effective responses to the need for medicines and medical devices. This initial work led to the supply of standard, pre‐packed kits that could be kept in readiness to meet priority health needs in emergencies.
The first “WHO Emergency Health Kit” was launched in 1990. After revision and further harmonization, the contents of the second kit, “The New Emergency Health Kit 98” were endorsed by WHO in collaboration with international and nongovernmental agencies. The third kit, the “Interagency Emergency Health Kit 2006” (IEHK 2006), accommodated: emergency prophylaxis to prevent human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection after sexual violence; the increasing antimicrobial resistance to commonly available antimalarials and antibiotics; injection safety policy; and the experience of agencies using the emergency health kit in the field.
Over the years, the complexity in updating the kit grew as the number of partners rose. As a result, the WHO secretariat proposed a process to formalize future revisions. An agreed procedure was published in the report of the 2007 meeting of the WHO Expert Committee on Selection and Use of Essential Medicines (1). The procedure was expanded upon in July 2008 during the first meeting of the review committee of the Interagency Emergency Health Kit, and further improved during the review process that followed the meeting. The current kit, the Interagency Emergency Health Kit 2011 (IEHK 2011), further improves the kit content and takes into account the need for mental health care in emergency settings and the special needs of children.