Assessment of Capacity Building of Member States of WHO South-East Asia Region in Global Health

The term “global health” has emerged as part of the larger political and historical process, replacing the term “international health” to imply a shared global responsibility for health and is also associated with the growing number and increased roles of other actors beyond governments. In September 2009, Director-General of WHO, in consultation with Member States has summited the progress report titled “Global health and foreign policy: Strategic opportunities and challenges” to the Sixty-fourth Session of UN General Assembly. The report highlighted the need to increase capacity and raise levels of training of diplomats and health officials in global health diplomacy and develop training standards and open-source information for education and training purposes. In September, 2010, The Sixty-third Session of the WHO Regional Committee for South-East Asia adopted a resolution SEA/RC63/R6. This urges Member States to establish policies and programmes for capacity building in global health of concerned staff who would be representing their respective governments at high-level policy and programme meetings. In the 69th Session of the WHO South-East Asia Regional Committee, September in 2016, the Regional Director was requested to conduct an assessment of five-year experience (2011– 2015) in capacity-building in global health in the Region in response to resolution RC63/R6 and to report to the Seventieth Session of the Regional Committee in order to obtain a more systematic understanding of the strengths, weaknesses and impact of activities, and to provide recommendations on effective management of capacity-building on global health. In pursuance of the above decision, an Assessment needs to be carried out for reporting to the 70th Session of the Regional Committee of WHO SouthEast Asia Region to be held in September, 2017.