Joint external evaluation of the International Health Regulations (‎2005)‎ core capacities of Kenya: mission report, 9–13 September 2024

Overview

The International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) form a global framework for health security that mandates each country to build and sustain agreed IHR core public health capacities for prevention, preparedness, detection and response to public health emergencies. Kenya, as a State Party to the IHR (2005), has made significant strides in implementing these regulations since they came into action in 2007. The second Joint External Evaluation (JEE) assessed Kenya's level of attainment of the IHR core capacities, using the World Health Organization (WHO) IHR JEE tool version 3.0. The evaluation was conducted in September 2024 by a team of external experts with international experience in diverse technical areas, engaging with technical experts from Kenya's government bodies, academic institutions and development partners. The evaluation process involved discussions in a peer-to-peer approach to agree on the scores by consensus across 19 technical areas, site visits at national and subnational levels, and resulted in the collaborative development of priority actions. This comprehensive report presents the technical area indicators’ scores and highlights the strengths and challenges as well as priority actions by technical area, with an emphasis on identified cross-cutting themes that require immediate attention for enhanced health security.

Although areas for improvement have been identified to enhance capacities for emergency preparedness and response in Kenya, the country has demonstrated commendable progress in several aspects of IHR implementation. During the JEE, some key overarching strengths were identified. In particular, country capacity has been significantly developed in the technical areas of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), zoonotic diseases and immunization.