Parallel Workshops
The history of epidemics and pandemics in the past few decades has taught us that pandemic risk is inevitable. It also serves as a reminder of the complex risks of new, emerging and re-emerging diseases, such as tuberculosis, HIV, cholera, swine flu, avian flu, Ebola, COVID-19 and most recently, monkeypox, particularly when they occur in contexts that have weakened public health services and/or are affected by humanitarian crises. A pandemic or epidemic, or subsequent measures to contain them, can also cause secondary crises through spikes in violence and civil unrest, economic downturn.
Availability of a National Contingency Plan for all types of epidemics and pandemics is a key towards achieving country operational readiness. However, COVID-19 exposed inadequacy of contingency planning and resources allocation strategies of public and prison health systems across the world.
In this presentation we will share the most recent data on diseases with high potential for epidemics that deserve regular monitoring and surveillance, as well as ICRC data on the most frequent outbreaks in places of detention in the past 5 years, the ongoing challenges faced in their control as well as the ICRC’s operational response and recommendations.