The World Health Organization (WHO) has been supporting countries to conduct internal assessments for monitoring implementation of the International Health Regulation (2005), for purposes of action-planning. With a view to make these assessments more objective, the IHR Review Committee on Second Extensions for Establishing National Public Health Capacities and on IHR Implementation suggested in 2014 to move from exclusive self-evaluation to voluntary Joint External Evaluation (JEE) that involves a combination of domestic and independent experts. This JEE is a monitoring and evaluation scheme that uses a combination of self-evaluation, peer review and voluntary external evaluations involving a combination of domestic and independent experts. 

In this regard the World Health Organization country office in South Africa supported the National Department of Health in South Africa to undertake a self-evaluation for a JEE (12-16 August 2024), and an external evaluation (16-20 September 2024). The objective of the external JEE was to review the IHR self-assessment country report & other previous assessment reports and jointly agree on the scores for the country’s health system capabilities for each technical area (19 in total). This report focuses on the Joint External Evaluation. The external evaluation team comprising subject matter experts supported by WHO Regional Office for Africa (AFRO), received the presentations and facilitated a workshop with country team in South Africa. In addition, site visits were undertaken to the relevant country co-ordinating offices, testing laboratories and ports of entry, with the aim of validating the JEE report. The external JEE workshop was well attended with over 150 participants comprising WHO technical officers; Governmental Departments (Health, Agriculture, Veterinary Services, Energy and Electricity; Border Management Authority; Environment) from the National and Provincial levels; private sector; UNICEF, USAID, MSF, SAHPRA, SAMHS, NECSA, NGOs; Research institutions and Academia. 

The WHO South Africa provided technical support to the IHR focal points and technical leads for each of the technical areas, broadly fitting into the IHR four key focal areas; Prevent, Detect, Response, and other related activities and ports of entry. The key output of the meeting was the self- evaluation report being validated, with most of the scores being sustained and some being reduced based on stringent criteria of the performance indicator attributes The participants received expert feedback from technical experts on their specific technical area, which will assist them to strengthen their competency area of responsibilities. Overall, the JEE workshop served as a huge learning experience for all participants to gaining knowledge across all the technical areas on the JEE. The next steps will be for the WHO and the external evaluators to finalise the JEE report that will be submitted to the country for validation. Thereafter the findings and priority actions from the JEE will be used to draft the 5 Year National Action Plan for Public Health Security (NAPHS).