ISLAMABAD: The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged the UN member countries including Pakistan to implement strategic preparedness and response plan in full spirit.
It said accelerating priority research and innovation, setting research and innovation at priority and diagnostics can only be the solution to overcome the deadly COVID-19 disease.
According to the WHO’s preparedness and response plan against COVID-19, the objectives of overcoming the multiplied numbers of COVID-19 affected people around the world can be achieved by rapidly establishing international coordination to deliver strategic, technical, and operational support through existing mechanisms and partnerships.
The WHO announced to establish integrated incident management teams at the global, regional and country levels, as required. These teams ensure regular communication between incident managers at different geographical levels of the response, and close operational coordination with national governments, partners across all sectors, and services at all levels.
The WHO established an Incident Management Support Team (IMST) together with key operational partners under the leadership of the Director-General. The Director-General will bring together key technical and operational partners to meet on a regular basis to provide updates on the outbreak and take decisions.
The Humanitarian Country Team in Pakistan established with context-appropriate coordination structures of which the UN contributions and support is coordinated by the UN Resident Coordinator with the WHO Head of Country Office as overall technical lead, if need be supported by a WHO incident manager.
At working level, operational partner coordination will be managed through the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), which includes technical agencies, NGOs, and Red Cross and Red Crescent organizations.
GOARN will coordinate global work on surveillance, epidemiology, modeling, diagnostics, clinical care and treatment, and other ways to identify, manage, and limit onward transmission of the virus. The GOARN network manager will chair these meetings.
Similarly, WHO is fully determined to scale up country preparedness and response operations, including strengthening readiness to rapidly identify, diagnose and treat cases; identification and follow-up of contacts when feasible (with priority given to high-risk settings such as healthcare facilities);infection prevention and control in healthcare settings; implementation of health measures for travelers; and awareness raising in the population though risk communication and community engagement.
A senior official of WHO Pakistan chapter on conditioned not to be named as restricted by office business protocols, informed The News Today that by accelerating priority research and innovation they can overcome this deadly disease. The WHO believed that Response Plan will build a common platform for standardized processes, protocols and tools, to facilitate multidisciplinary and collaborative research integrated with the response.
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