2023 Volume 28 Issue 3 Pages 115-123
In October 2014, the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) adopted the “One ASEAN, One Response 2020 and Beyond: ASEAN responding to Disasters as One” strategy at the Ministerial Conference on Disaster Management to strengthen regional cooperation in disaster response. In the health sector, disaster health management was identified as one of the priority issues for ASEAN health development. However, a mechanism for regional cooperation in disaster health management had not yet been established, and the ability of ASEAN member countries to deploy and coordinate the acceptance of Emergency Medical Teams (EMTs) in the region at the time of a disaster was also a challenge. In that situation, the technical cooperation “Project for Strengthening the ASEAN Regional Capacity on Disaster Health Management (ARCH Project)” was started in 2016 by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in collaboration with ASEAN. It achieved various results in its first three years during 2016–2019. This paper is a continuation following a previous case report and will report on the results from the 2019–2021 extension phase. The “ASEAN Leaders' Declaration on Disaster Health Management” (ALDDHM) was adopted on the occasion of the 31st ASEAN Summit on 13 Nov. 2017. In the extended phase, 1) the Plan of Action (POA) to implement this declaration by 2025 was approved by the ASEAN Health Ministers Meeting, 2) the Regional Coordination Committee on Disaster Health Management was officially established to promote the POA, 3) the Project supported the establishment of the ASEAN Academic Network among the education and research institutions related to disaster health management, leading to the ASEAN Academic Conference on Disaster Health Management being organized online, and 4) the standard curriculum for training courses on Disaster Health Management was developed. In addition, the Project continued to organize 5) the Regional Collaboration Drill (RCD) and has recently introduced 6) comprehensive information sheets for emergency medical teams (EMT) and 7) quality assurance for EMTs to the RCD. The ARCH project had been implemented for five and a half years, including the extension phase, and had achieved many outcomes and is approaching the final goal at a faster pace than the 10-year plan envisioned before the project began. The project has already moved into Phase 2 starting in 2022 and is working to support 19 of the 21 Targets for the POA. In order to improve ASEAN's capacity in the field of disaster health management during the preparedness and response phases of disasters, each ASEAN member state must improve its own capacity in disaster health management, along with the improvement of ASEAN's capacity for regional cooperation. To this end, the following measures should be taken: 1) Strengthening the Japanese advisory committee capacity (expansion of the Support Committee members), 2) Strengthening cooperation and exchange between ASEAN and Japan (promotion of participation in ARCH activities by Japan Disaster Relief Medical Teams / Disaster Medical Assistant Teams with Japanese registered personnel, support for the participation of ASEAN member countries' personnel in exercises held in Japan, etc.), 3) Strengthening collaboration and exchange of personnel in the academic research field of disaster health management (participation of Japanese members in the ASEAN Academic Network and establishment of an academic advisory group), and 4) Recognizing the importance of considering initiatives for public health crises, including response to COVID-19.
