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RI pushes reforms in outbreak responses
On high alert: A man picks out eggs from a poultry farm in South Tangerang, Banten, on Wednesday
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On high alert: A man picks out eggs from a poultry farm in South Tangerang, Banten, on Wednesday. Health and agricultural ministries have a launched a campaign to monitor and detect avian influenza virus H5N1 at poultry farms. Bird flu cases have been surging in recent weeks in Indonesia and other Asian countries.(JP/DON) (JP/DON)
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span class="inline inline-center">On high alert: A man picks out eggs from a poultry farm in South Tangerang, Banten, on Wednesday. Health and agricultural ministries have a launched a campaign to monitor and detect avian influenza virus H5N1 at poultry farms. Bird flu cases have been surging in recent weeks in Indonesia and other Asian countries.(JP/DON)
As global health emergencies continue to arise, Indonesia will push for a revision of the International Health Regulations (IHR) of the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2017.
The Health Ministry said that the government would utilize its position as the chair of this year's Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), an international forum to advance collective health security, to push for reforms.
'[The IHR draft revisions include] the strengthening of capacity, such as faster responses [to global health emergencies],' he said. 'We just have to distribute the draft to all GHSA members. They will provide input and if they agree, we will push for [the revisions] together,' the ministry's director general for disease control and environmental health (P2PL), Muhammad Subuh, said on Monday.
The IHR oblige 196 'States Parties to detect, assess, report, and respond to potential public health emergencies of international concern (PHEIC), at all levels of government, and to report such events rapidly to the WHO to determine whether a coordinated, global response is required'.
In the nine years since the regulations came into force in 2007, there have been four declared PHEIC, including the influenza H1N1 pandemic in 2009, the re-emergence of wild-type poliovirus in April 2014, the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa in August 2014, and the ongoing Zika virus outbreak since February this year.
Subuh said that the revisions were necessary as it had been almost a decade since the IHR came into force.
'The idea [for the revision] came from us. Since we're talking about revising something that is binding, we have to approach many countries. As we serve as the chair of the GHSA, we can take the lead many in many agenda items,' he said.
There has also been the emergence of new diseases, such as the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus and influenza H7N9, with still undetermined health risks to the global population.
While the IHR are designed to ensure global health security, their implementation still leaves a lot to desire, according the ministry's secretary general, Untung Suseno, who cited the Ebola outbreak in 2014 as an example of the failure of the IHR.
'When the Ebola virus emerged in Africa, no one was brave enough to help. The health systems [in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea] collapsed and the coordination was not there. The message is clear: Global health security needs greater attention,' he said.
According to Untung, it is not the IHR themselves that are lacking, but their implementation.
By 2012, only 42 nations (21 percent of member countries) had reported that they had fully implemented the IHR and built appropriate core capacities to detect, assess, report and respond to public health emergencies. In follow-up reporting in 2014, only 64 nations reported that they had fully implemented the IHR, an increase of only 10 percent over two years. The other nations either requested another two-year extension (81) or made no reports (48).
Therefore, new partnerships have formed to strengthen the global response to public health threats, including the GHSA.
As the successor to the US and Finland in helming the GHSA, Indonesia has the opportunity to steer global discussion on several issues that it deems important, such as zoonotic diseases, according to Health Minister Nila F. Moeloek.
This year, Indonesia has been appointed as the lead country to discuss the action package for zoonotic diseases.
'This is because Indonesia is deemed to perform well in managing zoonotic diseases through a multisector approach,' Nila said.
However, the threat of zoonotic diseases remains, according to Nila, citing the recent cases of avian flu.
This year alone, the government detected bird flu cases in 17 regencies and cities in seven provinces: Lampung, West Java, East Java, Yogyakarta, West Sulawesi, South Sulawesi and Jakarta, after years of declining cases.
'If we look at the trend, the numbers of avian flu cases kept declining from 2012 until 2015, with only two cases detected per year,' the ministry's director for zoonotic disease management, Vensya Sitohang, said.
While the number of cases increased this year, the government has not received any report of humans contracting the virus, she added.
'But we have to remain alert, we cannot be left unprotected,' Vensya said.
