The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has completed its joint evaluation of international health regulations, which started last March. In so doing, KSA becomes one of the 50 states worldwide competing the process. These international health regulations feature a suite of legally binding measures for world states, to prevent threats to the public health and the spread of disease worldwide; while maintaining human dignity, rights and basic freedom.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) has secured this objective through a series of steps since the international health regulations was issued in 2005. Immediately, along with the rest of the world, the Kingdom committed itself to implementing such regulations. So, they were actually put into practice in 2007. In 2014, KSA built all the required capacities for effective implementation, and officially announced meeting the needed conditions, following the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa which necessitated immediate implementation of the international health regulations across the globe.
The international community agreed to introduce a new assessment mechanism for voluntary external evaluation of state's capacity to put the international health regulations in place in 19 technical fields under three major aspects, including: Public Health Threats Surveillance Capacity, Public Health Threats Response Capacity and Public Health Threats Prevention Capacity. This was followed by developing and implementing an evidence-based national action plan to fill the gaps and maintain the related achievements.
So far, 50 countries worldwide have completed the joint external evaluation of international health regulations, including the Kingdom in last March. The final report was issued and published on WHO's portal; showing the Kingdom's capacity in most of the 19 technical fields. The report displayed the Kingdom's top readiness compared to the region's states which took part in the evaluation. Also, the report presented some opportunities for higher efficiency, including coordination and communication between public health sectors, combating and tracking biologically generated diseases, biosafety, biosecurity and the national lab system.
Currently, MOH is working with both local and foreign partners to develop a national action plan, supported with performance indicators to sustain both quality and efficiency in all technical fields in which the Kingdom excels, and to secure improvement wherever needed. The action plan features self-assessment supported with simulated emergency and accident threats to the public health; then followed by joint external evaluation over the coming three years.