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About the JEE process
The IHR require the 196 IHR state parties, including all World Health Organization (WHO) member states, to:
- plan for and respond to hazards (including disease outbreaks)
- have a national focal point for communication with WHO and other state parties
- respond to WHO requests for information about public health risks (eg, within 24 hours of events that may be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC))
- develop and maintain ‘core’ capacities for surveillance, investigation, responding to and reporting of all potentially significant public health events
- undertake measures to avoid public health risks from leaving our shores.
The JEE process allows an external assessment of a country’s capabilities to deliver the core capacities and other functions outlined in the IHR. JEEs are voluntary and have 2 stages – a self-evaluation and the external evaluation by a panel of experts.
New Zealand's role in the JEE
In November 2018, after New Zealand completed the self-evaluation, a delegation from WHO spent a week in New Zealand completing the external evaluation. The team of international experts worked with local experts to evaluate New Zealand’s preparedness for human and animal health outbreaks and health emergencies. They were supported by agencies involved in the national security system, including:
- Ministry of Health
- Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI)
- Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC)
- Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management (now the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA)
- ESR (now the Institute for Public Health and Forensic Science, PHF Science).
The external evaluators were experts from the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Republic of Korea, Italy, and the WHO – as well as the World Organisation for Animal Health. These external evaluators were also accompanied by observers from Jamaica, Fiji, Vanuatu and the Cook Islands.
Recommendations for New Zealand
The WHO's final JEE report outlined 4 overarching recommendations (below) and 54 priority actions for New Zealand to strengthen national systems and address identified gaps.
- Sustain and continue strengthening existing multisectoral, multidisciplinary coordination and collaboration around IHR-related activities at all levels, including through formalizing current arrangements where appropriate.
- Build on the momentum of the JEE process in New Zealand to strengthen implementation of the IHR (2005) and coordinate monitoring and evaluation across agencies through the IHR National Focal Point (NFP).
- Allocate increased, sustained funding and resources for advancing implementation of the IHR (2005) through the Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases and Public Health Emergencies, with a focus on strengthening national action around antimicrobial resistance (AMR), enhancing surveillance and risk assessment, addressing critical human resource needs and building risk communication capacity.
- Given New Zealand’s strong capability, consider formalising existing arrangements and devising new ones where relevant, to support sustainable IHR implementation in Pacific Island countries and territories.
Next steps
The JEE report was published by WHO in September 2019. Unfortunately, the need for a major and sustained health system response to the COVID-19 pandemic meant that the recommendations from the JEE report did not receive specific consideration.
However, work is currently underway to strengthen coordination with other agencies – particularly MPI – by using the NFP function to support IHR reporting and develop a proposed strategy for antimicrobial resistance. In addition, the Ministry of Health’s Global Health team is supporting health security capacity development in the Pacific.
