Asia Pacific Strategy For Emerging Diseases 2010

The Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases (APSED) was launched in 2005 as a common strategic framework for countries and areas of the region to strengthen their capacity to manage and respond to emerging disease threats, including influenza pandemics. Over the past five years, considerable progress has been made in the development and strengthening of the required core capacities. APSED 2010 will be implemented by building on the achievements of the original APSED, while recognizing variations in existing capacity levels across countries. It is intended that APSED 2010 will further support progress towards meeting International Health Regulations (2005) obligations and consolidate gains already made in establishing collective regional public health security. While APSED 2010 continued to focus on emerging diseases, it also seeks to maximize the benefits already achieved by widening its scope to include other acute public health threats and by identifying additional areas of synergy and special situations to which the Strategy can make important contributions. APSED (2010) seeks to provide a common framework for countries, WHO and partners to work together to enhance regional defence against public health threats.

This report looks at the progress that countries and WHO have made since the formulation of Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases (APSED) (2010), in particular in the reporting year July 2013 to June 2014. There are a number of tools countries can use to measure their progress towards implementing APSED and IHR obligations, including the IHR monitoring questionnaire, the performance indicators developed for APSED and the milestones developed in order to track progress against the APSED work plan.

The Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases is an important strategic framework for building sustainable national and regional capacities in the Asia Pacific Region for risk reduction preparedness detection risk assessment and response to emerging diseases. Health events will continue to occur in the Asia Pacific Region on a regular basis. This report looks at the progress that countries and WHO have made since the formulation of APSED (2010) in particular in the reporting year July 2012 to June 2013. Each APSED focus area as well as the issue of gender mainstreaming is discussed beginning with a description of the area followed by an overview of progress activities at the regional level and in countries challenges and next steps.

"Second Meeting of the Technical Advisory Group on Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases (2010), 10-12 July 2012, Manila, Philippines"--P. 72.

One Health is an emerging concept that aims to bring together human, animal, and environmental health. Achieving harmonized approaches for disease detection and prevention is difficult because traditional boundaries of medical and veterinary practice must be crossed. In the 19th and early 20th centuries this was not the case—then researchers like Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch and physicians like William Osler and Rudolph Virchow crossed the boundaries between animal and human health. More recently Calvin Schwabe revised the concept of One Medicine. This was critical for the advancement of the field of epidemiology, especially as applied to zoonotic diseases. The future of One Health is at a crossroads with a need to more clearly define its boundaries and demonstrate its benefits. Interestingly the greatest acceptance of One Health is seen in the developing world where it is having significant impacts on control of infectious diseases.

Providing an immediate, contemporary example of a region networking its response to disease outbreak events, this insightful book will appeal to global health governance scholars, students, and practitioners.