TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
ASEAN to set up regional public health agency
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
A worker adjusts an ASEAN flag at a meeting hall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Oct. 28, 2021 (Reuters/Lim Huey Teng)
A
SEAN countries have agreed on the establishment of a regional body to detect diseases that have the potential to become the next pandemic, as well as to synchronize regional health protocols to prevent the spread of communicable diseases in the region.
The 15th ASEAN Health Ministers Meeting has agreed on establishing the ASEAN Center of Public Health Emergencies and Emerging Diseases (ACPHEED), which will address three pillars of pandemic management: detection; surveillance; and response and risk management.
“This is an ASEAN-led cooperation to face the potential for a pandemic outbreak in the future,” Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said in a press conference in Bali on Saturday.
Budi said that three ASEAN countries – namely Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia – had agreed to host the offices of the center based on each of the three pillars to make sure that in the event of a pandemic outbreak the region would be ready to face it.
The minister explained that the body was similar to other public health bodies, such as the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, the ACPHEED would also respond to other kinds of public health emergencies, not just communicable diseases, that could become a pandemic.
“The responses could be in the form of vaccine [procurement], medicines, whether [public] masking [among other health protocols] is needed or not,” Budi said.
In addition to the agreement to establish the body, ASEAN countries also agreed on the need to standardize health protocols in the region.
