Develop/revise emergency operations plan
WHO Member States are required, under the International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005) Annex 1, Article 6, to “establish, operate and maintain a national public health emergency response plan, including the creation of multidisciplinary/multisectoral teams to respond to events that may constitute a public health emergency of international concern”. In addition, countries need to prepare for any events that would constitute local or national health emergencies.
Emergency operation plans (also known as emergency response plans) ensure the provision of rapid and coordinated action – during or immediately after an emergency – to save lives, reduce the health impact, ensure public safety and meet peoples’ basic health needs. The response to health emergencies includes a set of measures – strategic, operational and tactical – to reduce morbidity and mortality, and maintain or restore essential health services.
The WHO emergency operation plan assists Member States to implement an all-hazard process to plan and prepare for a public health emergency response. The process improves country-level preparedness and response capabilities and includes the following:
- Engagement activities to increase understanding of emergency systems.
- Development of an emergency operations plan (EOP) for health, or an emergency preparedness and response plan.
- A response planning roadmap to identify key areas for improvement and links into preparedness and capacity-building initiatives. These initiatives could include a national action plan for preparedness and response (also known as national action plans for health security).
WHO’s emergency operations plan (EOP) toolkit consists of:
- Emergency planning manual – describes the overall steps needed to implement emergency response planning.
- EOP template and guide – countries can use this template and guide and adapt the content to their own setting.
- Working annexes and forms – these are detailed templates and example forms that can be annexed to key sections of the EOP. They support the development of Standard Operating Procedures for multiple tasks within the emergency operations plan (for example, activating the Emergency Operation Centre, deploying staff), and of log sheets for tracking actions throughout the response.
- Emergency planning roadmap – the roadmap identifies actions, timelines and responsibilities to strengthen or clarify existing response mechanisms and processes.
- Glossary of terms and working definitions – provides working definitions for health emergency risk management. This is especially useful to clarify information when working with multisectoral terms.
The toolkit covers sudden-onset and slow-onset events. The former include infectious disease outbreaks, earthquakes, tsunamis and chemical spills. Slow-onset events include deteriorating situations where the public health risk may increase over time, such as progressive disease outbreak, drought or food insecurity.
Emergencies may also be complex in nature (i.e. combining more than one type of hazard, such as armed conflict) in which any emergency response has to be conducted in a difficult political and security environment, potentially involving a multisectoral, international response that goes beyond the mandate or capacity of any single agency. For this reason, although the toolkit was developed for public health authorities, it highlights the requirements for interoperability between the health sector and other sectors’ emergency plans.
