Sri Lanka becomes first country to develop National Action Plan for Health Security utilizing e-NAPHS platform
COLOMBO – Sri Lanka’s National Action Plan for Health Security 2024-2028 (NAPHS) development workshop was held from February 27 to 29, 2024 in a multi-stakeholder consultative effort utilizing the e-NAPHS tool developed by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Sri Lanka is the first country globally to utilize the e-NAPHS online tool that enables the progress review and monitoring of the 12–24 months operational plans of the NAPHS across sectors and stakeholders. More than 80 national subject matter specialists and technical representatives from the 19 technical areas participated in the event alongside partners from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Union and United Nations Agencies and technical representatives from WHO Headquarters, WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia and WHO Sri Lanka.
The e-NAPHS is designed to be a practical, comprehensive online tool that will help Member States plan and implement actions and monitor the progress of activities against their strategic results. It can be adapted to the country profile, will also allow integration and update of relevant assessments of International Health Regulation (IHR) capacities and other data. This will allow a faster transition from assessment to action and standardize the progress tracking mechanism.
In 2023, as preparation for the development of the NAPHS 2024-2028, Sri Lanka underwent several key assessments under the International Health Regulations monitoring and evaluation framework, namely the International Health Regulations – Performance of Veterinary Services (PVS) national bridging workshop (IHR-PVS NBW), Strategic Toolkit for Assessing Risk (STAR), Performance of Veterinary Services assessment through World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) and conducted the repeat Joint External Evaluation (JEE) of IHR capacities in September last year. The NAPHS utilized the recommendations from the above national capacity reviews and IHR assessments and translated these findings into concrete activities and prioritized actions.
The NAPHS consultation process started immediately after the JEE 2023 and aimed at reaching a consensus regarding priority strategic actions and way forward. Sri Lanka was successful in having the NAPHS workshop within 6 months of completing the JEE.
Following the last NAPHS which ran across 2018-2023, the new NAPHS aims to incorporate lessons learnt in half a decade and the unique experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also the first instance where a five-year NAPHS will now be accompanied by a two-year operational plan, a living document.
-WHO
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