The Global Health Security Challenge

With the outbreak Covid-19 taking over our lives for the past 2 years, all eyes are now on global efforts and its efficacy. It is definitely not a stretch to think of healthcare crisis as a global security threat considering how many lives diseases can end and how much it disrupts society.

Thankfully we have systems like Global Health Security to help us protect ourselves in time of global medical crises

What is Global Health Security?

The Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) is a global campaign to increase nations’ public health ability to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease threats. It was created to help countries achieve their responsibilities under the International Health Regulations. Today, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention is working with 31 nations throughout the world to achieve the GHSA’s aims.

The GHSA establishes clear, realistic, and quantifiable objectives for nations to enhance their public health systems and better prepare for outbreaks in a world where illnesses spread quicker and more unpredictable than ever before.

How the Global Health Security Agenda achieves its goals

Firstly, the Global Health Security carries out disease surveillance and outbreak response, including building information technology tools and systems and establishing routine surveillance for priority illnesses together with its participating organizations and nations.

Secondly, just like any other global security crises, Emergency management will be carried out. This would involve ensuring that governments have the information and resources they require, such as emergency operations centers that can respond quickly and effectively when epidemics occur.

Thirdly, they help by increasing our capacity to identify disease threats close to the source and inform decision-making through safe laboratory systems and diagnostics

Lastly, they assist in developing the workforce which includes frontline responders, laboratory technicians, disease detectives, emergency managers, and other health professionals who will be in charge when a crisis occurs.

The challenge of the Global Health Security Agenda and why it is important

Infectious illness risks that are prone to becoming epidemics have the potential to damage lives and disrupt economies, travel, trade, and the food supply. Outbreaks know no national borders and may quickly spread, putting the health, security, and wealth of all countries at risk.

Infectious illness outbreaks and epidemics have escalated since the turn of the century. Animals are responsible for the great majority of epidemic-prone infectious disease concerns, at a time when many humans throughout the world are living in closer proximity to animals. Over the last two decades, these risks have expressed themselves in the form of increasingly regular outbreaks, such as the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, which is the most dangerous in a century. Within the last decade we had witnessed the rise of global viral epidemics like H1N1 and Ebola which disrupted economies and claimed countless valuable lives. Hence it is of utmost importance that Global Health Security Agenda succeeds in its goal of preventing global health crises.