Dodoma- Tanzania Parliamentarians commit to strengthening health security preparedness during an awareness session organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) to keep all parliamentarians abreast with the development in the region and globally, related to health emergency preparedness.

This is following the WHO in collaboration with the Interparliamentary Union (IPU), African Parliamentary High-Level Conference on Strengthening Health Security Preparedness held in November last year, where member states and WHO Country Offices were mandated to organize awareness session for Parliamentarian across various countries.

The first ever session informed and engaged parliamentarians and provided information on the International Health regulations (IHR) and the Pandemic Accord. The session also supported provided clear guidance in situations of epidemics or public health emergencies and evidence-based information inorder to capacitate constituents and the Tanzania Parliaments to be better positioned to develop a framework to facilitate oversight on health security in the country.

In speech read on his behalf, the Country Representative, Dr Charles Sagoe-Moses underscored that, following the COVID-19 pandemic, there hve been a realization of the importance of improving the global health architecture and ensuring that it is based on the principles of fairness, equity, and solidarity

He noted “Parliamentarians, through their core functions of law-making, budgeting, and oversight, as well as their mandates to represent constituencies, can foster multisectoral action across government, engage in international partnerships, and play a critical role in advancing not only global health security, but also universal health coverage and achieving health under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. 

The regional strategy for health security and emergencies 2023-2030 which was endorsed by the Regional Committee in August 2022 has reaffirmed the importance of effective legislation framework in strengthening emergency preparedness and response, including ongoing global processes such as Inter-governmental Body (INB) that negotiates a new Pandemic Accord, and Working Group on the amendments of International Health regulations (IHR).

 Dr Ntuli Kapologwe, the Director of Preventives Services representing the Minister for Health, Hon. Ummy Mwalimu who is also a parliamentarian, commended WHO, for this timely coordination and session. She emphasized on the inclusion of members of parliament in health issues and health systems strengthening citing the recently passed universal health Insurance bill.

According to Hon. Ummy, ‘’Covid-19 pandemic has provided several lessons, particularly in strengthening health systems and ensuring all stakeholders are well informed inorder to travail. The parliament is where decisions are made on behalf of the people, they form an integral part of ensuring the heath for all agenda is achieved’.

The Tanzania WHO-IPU Awareness session brought together members of the Health Committee, United Republic of Tanzania Parliament, Officials from the Ministry of Health, and the World Health Organization from both the Country Office and the Regional Office.

During his presentation on the Global and Regional Collective Action to enhance parliaments and parliamentary engagement for health emergency preparedness, Dr Dick Chamla, the PAM - Emergency Preparedness from WHO Regional Office highlighted several supports WHO is providing to member states in translating global processes in Africa through parliaments (Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), Working Group on the Amendments of IHR (WGIHR) and Political declaration of UNGA High level meeting on PPPR). He mentioned that the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Resolution on achieving universal health coverage by 2030 and its emphasis on the need for strong capacities to prevent, detect and respond to public health risks is one of the key component of the support to member state.

The awareness session was embraced with lots of affirmation and commitment in the urgency of strengthening health security preparedness in Tanzania.

The Heath committee Chairperson, Hon. Stanslaus Haroon Nyongo stated that the parliamentary team has learnt a lot through this orientation meeting and thanked fellow MPs for their active engagement in the subject. He further stressed that initiatives for strengthening national health security preparedness requires political will. He reiterated that as MPs, they have a big role to play in the agreed government interventions and plans for IHR implementation including budget allocation, and hence opined for their clear understanding of the initiatives and full support.

“This is a timely orientation. I urge us all to further orient and engage Members of Parliaments of other committees to inform them that, the agreed international negotiations are implementable, he underscored. “Let’s work together to strengthen pandemic preparedness so that we never experience again what occurred in Covid in case of the next pandemic”.