Harare — From 29 June to 4 July 2025, Zimbabwe performed its second Joint External Overview (JEE) to assess the country’s skill to forestall, detect, and acknowledge to public properly being threats below the International Health Guidelines (2005). The JEE, coordinated by the Ministry of Health and Small one Care (MoHCC) with strengthen from WHO and partners, marks a most indispensable milestone in strengthening Zimbabwe’s public properly being emergency preparedness and response systems.
The JEE is a voluntary, collaborative process customary globally to assess a country’s readiness to tackle infectious illness outbreaks and other properly being emergencies. It’s performed each five years, with the country’s first evaluate accomplished in 2018.
“The JEE provides us a structured opportunity to check how ready we are to detect and acknowledge to public properly being threats and we thank the entire partners who contain made this which that you just can imagine,” acknowledged Dr Wenceslaus Nyamayaro, MoHCC Performing Chief Director, Public Health.
The inner self-evaluation, the key section of the JEE, was accomplished in July 2025 with over 100 contributors from all the scheme thru sectors together with properly being, atmosphere, veterinary companies and products, defense, catastrophe management, civil society, and trend partners together with WHO, UNICEF, FAO, Africa CDC and others. This participatory process assessed 19 technical areas starting from biosafety and surveillance to legislation and aspects of entry.
Key areas that emerged as requiring urgent consideration embody outdated-fashioned or poorly applied excellent devices, coupled with little availability of excellent strengthen at subnational levels. Gender equity in emergencies remains a articulate, with vital gaps in funding for gender-based violence (GBV) prevention and response, as well to low illustration of ladies in emergency preparedness and resolution-making processes. Funding for emergency response activities was moreover highlighted as insufficient. Surveillance systems for foodborne diseases and healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are peaceable fragmented, highlighting the necessity for stronger wicked-sector coordination. Coordination between the human, animal and environmental properly being sectors is peaceable customary, exhibiting the necessity to make stronger how these groups work together. Biosafety and biosecurity capacities moreover require strengthening, in particular when it comes to laboratory infrastructure and personnel coaching. Additionally, readiness at aspects of entry remains little, with gaps in the skill to detect and acknowledge to public properly being threats at borders and airports.
Zimbabwe moreover assessed its growth in tackling antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a rising global chance. Whereas the country has developed a sturdy One Health AMR National Motion Belief and established 14 multisectoral surveillance sites, challenges remain in laboratory skill, integration of details systems and containment of multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs).
The next section of the JEE will contain an exterior validation mission scheduled for 6–13 September 2025. A personnel of global cloth experts, coordinated by WHO’s Regional Spot of business for Africa, will work with technical groups in Zimbabwe to validate ratings, evaluate documentation and conduct characteristic visits to key properly being facilities together with laboratories and aspects of entry. Following the mission, Zimbabwe will form or update its National Motion Belief for Health Security (NAPHS). This thought will consolidate findings from the JEE, past outbreak evaluations, and chance assessments to details future investments and reforms in public properly being preparedness.
“The evaluate is set staunch improvement. It displays Zimbabwe’s commitment to offer protection to the properly being of its other folks thru stronger systems, greater details, and broader collaboration,” acknowledged Dr. Desta Tiruneh, WHO Representative to Zimbabwe.
The evaluate was made which that you just can imagine with funding from the Health Resilience Fund (HRF) thru WHO, with further strengthen mobilized by MoHCC from Africa CDC and UNICEF.
