‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ – imagine if you have a limited resource while you desire to be healthy, you usually to put an effort on your consumption, exercise, living in the proper setting, as well as avoid the risk-taking situation. Most of those practice is very common, but few people can do it.
Similarly, to the Emergency Preparedness scheme, recent analysis showed that many countries have not reached the level of preparedness required to deal with health emergencies. In addition, pre-questionnaire from participate countries found that all countries have only one and obsolete emergency preparedness/contingency plan which never been revised in the past 10 years.
It is estimated that the economic loss from a pandemic is $60 billion per year while preparedness cost is about $4.6 billion, which is significant cheaper and relatively affordable. However, currently, there is no financing mechanism to motivate governments in high-risk countries to invest in preparedness. Dr Chadia Wannous, expert in disaster management, explained.
The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) Sub-Regional Representation for South-East Asia has held the workshop on emergency preparedness in Bangkok, Thailand on 27-28 August 2019. This workshop is aimed to sharing the best practices on emergency preparedness, encouraging public-private collaboration, and building capacity to member countries to mobilize resources more effectively and develop their national emergency preparedness plan. Case study regarding avian influenza outbreak in Malaysia and rabies disease management in Indonesia has been shared and discussed.
This workshop used African Swine Fever (ASF) as an example to help countries to identify areas where capacities should be built for the development, revision or testing of the national emergency preparedness plans. Together with the PVS Pathway and Good Emergency Management Practices (GEMP), which were the selected tools to support countries in assessing and improving their strategic plan, that would reduce the economic and social impacts of animal disease outbreaks.
A total of 59 participants attended in the workshop was including 36 representatives from the public and private sectors from 11 countries, experts, partner organization and observers.
