Joint external evaluation tool: International Health Regulations (‎2005)‎ - third edition

Overview

The first edition of the WHO Joint External Evaluation (JEE) tool was published in February 2016 followed by the second edition of the tool that was made available in February 2018. By the end of May 2022, 116 countries had requested and completed the voluntary joint external evaluations using the first and the second editions of the JEE tool.

In 2020, the IHR Review Committee and the Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee for the WHO Health Emergencies Programme expressed the need to adjust the IHR monitoring, and evaluation instruments based on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. In early 2021 the JEE Secretariat began the process of systematic review of the tool.  These efforts included a consultative meeting of March 2021 to identify improvements of the JEE tool based on lessons from COVID-19 pandemic, followed by constitution of a technical working group composed of global experts from WHO, partner institutions and Member States to review and revise the JEE tool based on the recommendations of the technical consultative meeting. These changes and improvements made by the technical working group are reflected in the third edition of the JEE tool.

The main changes within the third edition of the JEE tool include the split of the technical area National legislation, policy, and financing into two technical areas (Legal instruments and Financing); the drop of the technical area previously titled Reporting and the move of indicators to the technical area IHR coordination, National IHR Focal Point and advocacy; and the merging of two previous technical areas (Emergency preparedness and Emergency operations centre) into a single one named Health emergency management.

Food safety; Linking public health and security authorities; Chemical; and Radiation technical areas were not changed. Minor edits were made in some attributes of Biosafety and Biosecurity technical area.

Overall, the number of technical areas is unchanged at 19, and indicators increased from 49 to 56 indicators.

The new tool is expected to improve quality of assessment of preparedness capacities of Member States for timely detection, prevention, and effective response to public health emergencies.