The Ministry of Health with WHO support organized from 12 to 16 March 2018, a multisectoral workshop on the initial self-evaluation of IHR using the Joint External Evaluation(JEE) tool.

The workshop was opened by Dr Innocent Turate, Head of Department of IHDPC/RBC, who reminded participants that this workshop is a key step for the strategy to achieve the SDG n° 3.d focusing on international public health threats prevention and control.

He called upon participants to own this activity with commitment to join hands together in order to achieve high performance in regards to SDG indicator related to IHR.

The main objective of IHR evaluation is to strengthen countries, especially developing ones in early warning, risk reduction and management systems against national and global health risks since it has been noted that new threats such as Ebola, strike heavily and leave behind a lot of victims in a shorter time because countries were are not prepared and are not jointly collaborating in preventing and fighting such diseases spread by interaction between human beings, animals and environment.

Rwanda stepped to the IHR standard model of detection and response using a multi sectorial approach which countries should use to secure their populations and environment.

According to Dr Jose Nyamusore, Epidemic Surveillance and Response Division Manager within Rwanda Biomedical Centre, "this preliminary meeting on self-evaluation focused on looking back whether Rwanda has been complying with International Health Regulations since the next step of the Joint External Evaluation will bring then international experts for assessing where Rwanda is currently standing in IHR compliance, and provide guidance on which areas to strengthen in terms of jointly preventing and tackling potential threats".

"Health security is about world safety and security", added Dr José. He indicated that to reach this objective entails useful tools like JEE that helps to monitor, evaluate, plan and advocate in a bid to build country resilience towards preventing, detecting and responding to public health threats of national and international concerns whether natural, deliberate or accidental.

He emphasized that nowadays fighting the spread of diseases in human being can’t be done by one sector, naming health, when a number of threats for human being are coming from animals, environment… Thus, the International Health Regulations which are a multisectoral agreement is key for ensuring international security and health while JEE allows to know the country status and identify gaps, prioritize and mobilize resources.

Dr Andre Rusanganwa ,WHO Diseases Prevention and Control Officer, underlined the importance of this multi sectorial approach by presenting 10 public threats to global health in 2018 namely pandemic influenza, health conflicts, cholera, diphtheria, natural disasters, Meningitis, Yellow Fever, malnutrition, food poisoning which are aggravated by health emergencies such as conflicts, disasters and disease outbreaks. He committed WHO support to finalize the IHR evaluation process and active use.

The multisectoral workshop was attended by around 50 specialists from various sectors of government and partners such as health, agriculture, animal, environment, trade, security…