OMS Civil-Military collaboration project
Civil-Military Collaboration for Health Emergency Preparedness.
This project is part of WHO’s strong commitment to strengthening multi-sectoral coordination for health emergency preparedness, by engaging non-traditional health actors, such as civilian and broad military stakeholders.
The objective remains collaboration between civilian and military bodies, not in crisis management, but rather in capacity development for health emergency preparedness. The first contacts between WHO and ICMM concerning this health collaboration were established in JAKARTA in 2017. In the “Jakarta Call for Action”, several recommendations were made:
Don’t wait for a crisis before collaborating: establish a calendar of joint training courses.
At the special session of the CIMM General Assembly in 2021, Mr Ludy SURYANTORO, WHO’s Head of Multisectoral Engagement for Health Security, presented this framework for civil-military health collaboration.
The aim is to achieve cross-sectoral collaboration and coordination between public health and military actors.
Useful documents which provide further information on this issue are:
The WHO guidance document on national civil-military health collaboration 9789240030343-eng.pdf (who.int) an expert commentary from Chatham House, written by Lieutenant General (retired) Louis Lilywhite, in relation to the WHO guidance document, in which he describes the military’s new roles in this area New roles for the military in health emergency preparedness -.
