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2022 GHSA Ministerial Meeting in Seoul
Date : 28th Nov.(Mon.) ~ 30th Nov.(Wed.) 2022.
Theme : Action for the Next Phase of the GHSA after COVID-19
Background
Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) was established in 2014 with the framework of Prevent, Detect and Respond to keep the world safe from global health treats caused by infectious diseases. The GHSA is a country-to-country, or within GHSA, a “mentor-mentee”, action oriented global network for health security that aims to build capacities in terms of preparedness for novel infectious diseases, which distinguishes the GHSA from other networks.
Since 2014, primarily, the GHSA Ministerial Meeting has been held annually. However, during the inception of the GHSA's second phase (2019-2024), member states have consented to hold ministerial meeting every other year. Followed by the ministerial meeting in 2020 (Thailand), this year’s Ministerial Meeting will mark its seventh meeting and, nevertheless, it is our honor to host the GHSA Ministerial Meeting for the second time in Seoul amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Eight years of efforts and achievements helped the GHSA attract a total of 71 countries and 10 non-Government partners of International Organizations (IO) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO).
Recently, the GHSA Steering Group developed the GHSA 2024 Framework to support health security stakeholders across the world for the development and implementation of the best possible policies and strategies to ensure the achievements of their health security goals and targets by 2024. Thus, GHSA member states and other affiliated stakeholders should focus on deriving implementation tasks through each Action Package of the GHSA.
During the Seventh GHSA Ministerial Meeting, we would like to re-examine the role of the GHSA in the post COVID-19 era and share a vision for the future direction of the GHSA and encourage the GHSA member states to fully participate GHSA's Action Pack- ages activities.
Theme
The Seventh GHSA Ministerial Meeting focuses on the third phase (2025-2030) of action plans for GHSA under the overarching theme: “Action for the Next Phase of the GHSA after COVID-19”.
The meeting's theme is particularly relevant to address the past and current status of the world under COVID-19 and present a vision for the future to prepare for subsequent pandemics. We would also like to create an atmosphere for member states and Ministers to share and give comments on their experiences to tackle the meeting’s key agendas and future visions of the GHSA.
For instance, COVID-19 spontaneously affected numerous areas around the world: for instance, cordoning off borders caused unprecedented disruptions in demand and supply, lay-offs due to lockdowns increased the unemployment rate, stigmatizing certain populations and thereby provoking racism, disrupting freedom of choice by forcing people to wear masks, creating problems with National Immunization Programs (NIP) with polio reemerging as a consequence. Moreover, the burden of the novel disease was unequal from country to country; both socially and culturally, in jurisdictions where the “Right to Health” was not necessarily respected. Therefore, it is crucial to strengthen the world’s ability to prepare and respond to pandemics affecting all areas of society at a broader level.
In the light of the foregoing, the participants will share experiences and thoughts on several significant strategies to reap insights to prepare for and respond to the pandemic, in the light of overall health system, diplomacy in health, and policies in specific areas, in particular zoonotic diseases which are expected to be the source of future pandemics. In addition, COVID-19 highlighted several important factors amid the pandemic. Communications with the public to support public health measures by institutional and behavior-modifying interventions need to be heavily emphasized. Legal preparedness for infectious diseases to provide firm ground for various policies and measures amid pandemics, and sustainable financing for strengthening pandemic preparedness and response capacity should be addressed.
Recognizing the first declaration of Seoul Declaration in 2015, Ministers will adopt a new Seoul Declaration to reiterate the role of the GHSA platform and their commitment to continue to work to ensure the achievements of their health security goals and targets by 2024 and to support the extension of the GHSA until 2030 to accelerate the implementation of the IHR (2005) as well as the establishment of GHS Coordination Office.
General Information
The working languages of the meeting will be English and there will be only Korean to English / English to Korean interpretations provided. No other languages will be provided.
(Mon.) | (Tue.) | (Wed.) | |
(Approx. 09-12) | (AP Side Events are held separately) | (Proposal of New Seoul Declaration) | |
(Approx. 14-18) | - | ||
(After 18) | - | - |
* Side/Satellite Events: Action Packages, bilateral meetings may be held concurrently with the above programs in separate Grand Hyatt Seoul's bushiness rooms.
Given the restrictions and challenges posed by the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, some events are to be held via a hybrid format, with in-person participation and live streaming. However, the final format is still tentative, and we plan to prioritize in-person participants at the venue.
The Seventh GHSA Ministerial Meeting will be held over three consecutive days. The event will be composed of a High Security Experts Forum; a side event, a Steering Group Meeting, an Evaluation Exercise with Disease X and lastly, a Ministerial Meeting that will be held on the third day with endorsement of the New Seoul Declaration.
Objectives
Through the Seventh GHSA Ministerial Meeting, the objectives of the meeting are to reaffirm the critical role that GHSA plays in catalyzing multilateral action to reach global targets for health security by focusing on the top priorities, challenges, needed changes and target actions.
Expected Outcomes
Financial Aid for Traveling and Accommodations for United Nation's Least Developed Country
The ROK is planning to financially aid member states who are willing to participate the event but need guarantees related to travel. Thus, the ROK is proposing member states to submit a financial aid form. However, due to budget constraints, we will evaluate requests according to the criteria below.
Financial Aid will include the following:
However, due to budget constraints, we will evaluate requests according to criteria below:
Expected Participants
The GHSA Ministerial Meeting will bring together representatives from the 71 GHSA member states at the ministerial level, high-level Government representatives, 10 Interna- tional Organizations and Non-Governmental Organizations.
Background
Launched in February 2014, the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) is a growing partnership of over 71 countries, international organizations, and non-governmental stakeholders to help strengthen countries’ capacity for building a safer and secure world from infectious disease threats and elevating global health security agenda to a national and global priority. The GHSA has made significant progress toward sustained country-level health security capacity. A series of meetings were convened at the working and ministerial levels; good recommendations and declarations were made and agreed upon; and collaborations with WHO, WOAH, FAO and the World Bank have been intensified.
The Kampala Declaration was adopted in the 2017 GHSA Ministerial Meeting held in Uganda to extend the GHSA’s mandate to additional five years (to 2023). Nevertheless, the gaps in prevention, detection and response against infectious disease outbreaks are still found across the country, which has exacerbated the COVID-19 situation. The COVID-19 pandemic has been posing devastating impacts to the global community on health system, economic stability, and national security.
As the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the world’s under-preparedness to global health threats raised by emerging infectious diseases, we need to continue and further strengthen the action-oriented, peer-to-peer, multi-sectoral and multilateral global efforts and actions for the next phase of the GHSA to brace ourselves for future pandemics.
Objectives
A. General Objective
To identify the importance and necessity of strengthening global health security through the GHSA platform, share views on the way forward for the third phase (2024-2028) of the GHSA, and draw commitments to active engagement in the GHSA activities in the third phase.
B. Specific Objectives
• to identify and review the commitments made, achievements and challenges encountered during the second phase (2019-2023) of the GHSA
• to review important Action Packages activities and identify best practices, challenges and future plans;
• to present updates on the implementation of important assessments by the World Health Organization;
• to identify ways of building partnerships that enable multisectoral partners to actively engage in and contribute to the GHSA; and
• to identify strategic policies on how the GHSA moves forward.
Expected Outcome
The expected outcome of the meeting is to initiate global commitment and active engagement among GHSA member countries to strengthen the GHSA platform through support from the GHS Coordination Office in Seoul.
Venue and Date
Grand Ballroom, Grand Hyatt Seoul, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 28 - 30 November 2022
Participants
Background
The world has observed that most countries have undergone the unprecedented COVID-19 without being fully prepared to cope with emerging infectious disease outbreaks or pandemics, especially in terms of early detection and rapid response. The Republic of Korea (ROK) has been commended on minimizing impacts on the economy and health system at the early stage of the outbreak by securing time for the country to make vaccines and drugs available to the public with active response measures. Such effective response is based on the reformation on the national preparedness for and response to public health emergencies in the wake of the MERS-CoV outbreak in 2015.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the necessity of reforming and solidifying the global preparedness and response system against the next pandemic. As the GHSA’s goal of prevention-detection-response strategy has clearly showed the exact measures we need to deal with global public health threats, the GHSA members will explore how to deepen collaboration through the GHSA platform to achieve the goal.
Session Objective
To review the current status of the global preparedness and response against emerging infectious diseases and achievements of the GHSA and explore what the GHSA should focus on for the next phase of the GHSA to better prepare for and respond to future health threats.
Specific Objective
√ Materials to be included: Preparedness of laboratories, securing of hospitals beds and personnel for epidemiological investigations, governance, amendment of relevant laws, enhancement of the public-private-partnership for the pandemic
√ Materials to be included: Preferable NPI (social distancing), tactics to increase the conformity of the general public, etc. ;
√ Materials to be included: Introduction of a new evaluation tool, JEE 3.0, analysis of Covid19 impacts on nations, etc. ;
√ Materials to be included: GHSA’s achievements in the second phase including TFs, secretariat, advocacy, etc. ;
√ Materials to be included: Nations’ experiences of revision for the adoption and implementation of relevant mitigation measures, Work of Legal preparedness Action Packages, etc. ;
√ Materials to be included: Framing the best strategy to secure funds, etc. ;
√ Materials to be included: Gaps and improvement needed for the 3rd phase, ways to strengthen the GHSA platform and the achievement of the GHSA goals and vision, and potential support from the GHS Coordination Office ;
Expected Outcome
√ To motivate the participants to review important factors and strategies before and during COVID-19 pandemic to help their countries to deliberate plans and ideas for capacity-building for the next pandemic through engagement in the third phase (2024-2028) of the GHSA.
√ To review the activities implemented during the second phase of the GHSA to make a better performance in the third phase and share the vision of the GHSA.
√ To support the ROK’s efforts to more actively engage in the global health security activities, including support for the GHSA activities in the third phase through the Global Health Security Coordination Office to be established in Seoul.
Venue and Date
Grand Ballroom, Grand Hyatt Seoul, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 28 - 30 November 2022
Participants
Background
The Immunization Action Package aims to increase the vaccination rate for Vaccine-Preventable Diseases to save lives. In order to achieve this, the GHSA member countries must have the strong capacities to implement the sustainable National Immunization Program(NIP). To identify GHSA member countries’ challenges and strengths of the NIP, the Immunization Action Package has conducted the NIP Survey of the GHSA member countries along with the literature review and analysis of WHO-UNICEF data.
The capacities of the National Immunization Program can be divided into three major areas;
The Expert Forum focuses on identifying the 7th GHSA Ministerial Meeting participant countries’ needs or challenges to improve the NIP capacities for South Africa, Peru, Singapore, Philippines, Nigeria, Malaysia, Madagascar, Lao PDR, Georgia, Gambia, DR Congo, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Uganda, Argentina, Switzerland, Togo, Tanzania, Denmark, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Republic of Korea (as of October 5).
In a nutshell, the major challenges related to the 7th GHSA Ministerial Meeting participant countries can be listed as follows;
To address these challenges, the Expert Forum can function as a leverage for the collaboration between the countries with insufficient NIP capacities in the specific area and the countries that satisfy these capabilities. The participants of the 7th GHSA Ministerial Meeting can choose relevant member countries in discussing specific issues and contemplate approaches for actual practice.
The Immunization Action Package intends to encourage the GHSA member countries or non-member countries to join the NIP capacity-building project in the three areas for low-capacity countries, as well as monitoring the process of cooperation and developing the monitoring tool to measure the rate of improvement of the NIP capacities.
| 08:30 - 09:00 | Registration | - |
| 09:00 - 09:05 | Welcoming Remarks | Kyong Ran Peck Commissioner of KDCA |
| 09:05 - 09:30 | Keynote Address | VIP(TBC) |
| 09:30 - 09:40 | Group Photo | - |
| Due to COVID-19, each GHSA member country has acknowledged the importance of strengthening the National Immunization Program capacities in peacetime. The correlation between the vaccination rates of DTP, Polio, and measles in 2019 before COVID-19 and the COVID-19 vaccination rate in 2022 in the 71 GHSA member countries was 0.63, indicating that there is a close relationship between the mandatory vaccination rate in peacetime and the vaccination rate in public health emergency such as COVID-19. The KDCA will share the successful case of ROK in terms of the routine immunization during pandemic situation to examine the Information Technologies capacities such as the use of stock management tool or vaccine data management, the integration of private sector activities and data into the national immunization system. | ||
| 09:40 - 09:55 | Resilient Infrastructure | KDCA, Republic of Korea |
| The financial sustainability of the National Immunization Program has gained importance to achieve current and future target levels of immunization performance in terms of access, utilization, quality, safety and equity, improve prevention and early detection and effective response to infectious disease threats and introduce new vaccines and technologies development. As a result of countries ‘immunization’ JEE Report(WHO), financial challenges were addressed among 15 low and middle-income countries (10 African, 2 Western Pacific, and each in Europe, South-East Asia, and Eastern Mediterranean regions). As per World Bank’s 4 classification, 71 GHSA member countries consist of 22 high income(31.0%), 19 lower middle income(26.8%), 17 low income(23.9%), 13 upper middle income(18.3%). Financial sustainability affects vaccine coverage, access, and delivery. To improve vaccine coverage, the government’s strong commitment (co-financing, campaign, and budget allocation throughout the central and local government, human resources development) is imperative. Furthermore, to sustain vaccine access and delivery, financial independence, negotiation with vaccine manufacturers, and development of technical professionals are highlighted. Challenges vary by region and income status. Further analysis and actions on increasing efficiencies in different settings have remained. | ||
| 09:55 - 10:10 | Sustainable Financing | The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (TBC) |
| 10:10 - 10:30 | Coffee Break | - |
| The challenges of vaccine access and equity have been the main agenda to discuss at the global, regional and national levels before and during COVID-19. Under JEE, of 71 GHSA member countries, 80% of countries in the African region have struggled with vaccine access due to geographical accessibility and vaccine point. As of August 2022, of COVID-19 Vaccination Rate(excluding Ukraine) is as follows; 0~20% vaccination rate in 17 GHSA member countries(15 Africans, 1 Eastern Mediterranean, 1 America), 20~40% in 10 countries(9 Africans, 1 Eastern Mediterranean), 40~60% in 4 countries(1 African, 3 Eastern Mediterraneans), 60~80% in 22 countries(1 Eastern Mediterranean, 10 Europeans, 4 Americas, 3 South-East Asians, 4 Western Pacific countries), 80~90% in 15 countries(1 African, 4 Europeans, 3 Americas, 7 Western Pacific countries), and more than 90% in 2 countries(1 America, 1 Eastern Mediterranean). COVID-19 vaccine inequity will have a lasting and profound impact on socio-economic recovery in low and lower-middle-income countries without urgent action to boost supply, share vaccines and ensure they’re accessible to everyone now. | ||
| 10:30 - 10:45 | Vaccine Access & Equity | International Vaccine Institute (IVI) |
| Vaccine campaigns to fight COVID-19 does not only depend on vaccine efficacy and safety. Vaccine hesitancy among the general public and healthcare workers is a crucial factor that must be considered in the control of the pandemic. According to previous studies, there is a large variability in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance rates between different regions and countries. Low COVID-19 vaccine acceptance rates were more pronounced in the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Europe and Russia. High acceptance rates in East and South East Asia would help to achieve proper control of the pandemic. Furthermore, the NIP survey illustrates the distribution of vaccine coverage and covid-19 vaccination (%) to verify actual vaccination outcomes compared to vaccine access and delivery. The vaccination coverage does not change in accordance to type of vaccination campaign, whether it is mandatory or recommended, but how it is implemented and the challenges that result in vaccine hesitancy. Such prevalence of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy mandates collaborative efforts of governments to communicate with the public about the safety and efficacy of available COVID-19 vaccines. | ||
| 10:45 - 11:00 | Vaccine Hesitancy | The United States |
| The panel discussion will prioritize in examining three NIP capacities such as infrastructure, sustainable financing, and vaccine-related capacity. | ||
| 11:00 - 11:05 | Infrastructure Capacity | Argentina (TBC) |
| 11:05 - 11:10 | Sustainable Financing Capacity | Singapore (TBC) |
| 11:10 - 11:15 | Vaccine-related Capacity | Bangladesh (TBC) |
| 11:15 - 11:40 | Open Discussion | Question & Answer |
| 11:40 - 12:00 | Closing | - |
