Review of the Emergency Health Asia Pacific Training

Asia Pacific is a region mostly affected by natural disasters and is where the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has worked on improving emergency preparedness and response for many years. Capacity building in this area has predominantly been in the areas of risk reduction, developing early warning and response systems, establishing contingency, response strategies and pre-­positioning of essential items in high-­risk countries.

Emergency health is considered a growing sub-­sector and has received substantial attention and capacity building at country and regional level as a whole. Prioritized areas for emergency health response in emergencies include the management of mass casualty and medical response, communicable diseases, water, sanitation and hygiene promotion, nutrition, sexual and reproductive health, and psychological support. While the specificities of these areas are in line with the public health standards in the sector, it is coordinated and seen as an essential part of emergency health preparedness and response. Between 2005 and 2008, National Societies (NS) in Asia Pacific with support from the IFRC regional delegations conducted six regional emergency health trainings under the name “Public Health in Emergencies (PHiE) Training”. In 2008, a review was carried out by the IFRC Secretariat’s Emergency Health Unit to identify lessons learnt and areas for improvement moving forward. In 2010 a standard curriculum that was adapted to local context by the IFRC Asia Pacific Zone Health Unit called the Asia Pacific Emergency Health Training (APEHT) as was rolled from 2010. The APEHT aims to enhance the IFRC’s emergency health preparedness and response capacity in the Asia Pacific by preparing a pool of emergency health professionals, who can be deployed as surge capacity in a timely manner within the Regional Disaster Response Team (RDRT) system. The trained professionals can participate in a variety of emergency health activities such as needs assessment, program planning and coordination of emergency health interventions. The APEHT has also contributed to strengthening the emergency health preparedness and response capacity of NS through its trained staff, who have in many cases led emergency health operations in country, delivered emergency health training to staff and volunteers, and deployed internationally. The APEHT was carried out in Singapore, Philippines and Hong Kong in 2010, 2011 and 2013 respectively. These training courses were co-­organized by the National Societies and IFRC.

The main purpose of the review was to determine the extent to which the APEHT conducted by the IFRC Asia Pacific zone office during 2010-2013, contributed to building capacity of National Societies in responding to emergency health needs national and regionally. Alongside this, the review has focused on identifying the level of effectiveness, efficiency and quality of the APEHT in equipping trained participants with the required knowledge and skills to carry out key tasks expected in emergency health operations as RDRT members.